boy

Sometimes the history of a word reveals something dark about human history and society, and this is probably one of them. Boy as a general word meaning “young male” became current from early medieval times, but prior to that it had meant just “servant” (compare the modern French garçon, which doubles for both “boy” and “waiter”). However, it gets darker; it is likely that boy is a shortened form of emboié, “shackled, fettered”, which implies that not only were servants shackled, but they were defined by those shackles. There are some who would certainly be happy to see the practice revived.