Pinboy

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A worker employed to reset fallen pins and return bowling balls in a bowling alley
2. Someone hired to stand at the end of a bowling lane and manually set up pins after each frame
3. A person whose job is to arrange pins and retrieve balls for bowlers in a bowling establishment

Etymology: A pinboy was the young worker who reset the wooden pins at the end of a bowling lane, a job that existed long before automatic pinsetters replaced it. The word is a plain compound of "pin" and "boy", the two ordinary English nouns joined together, and it describes exactly what the job was: a boy tending the pins. The compound shows how English often names an occupation by its object plus a worker noun. Bowling pins were set up and cleared by hand, so whoever handled them was simply the pin boy, and the name stuck to the role regardless of the worker's actual age. Its history is tied to the sport itself rather than to any special coinage.

Synonyms: pinsetter