pretty-boyn.

1785 Morning Post & Daily Advertiser 2 July The present method of hanging only once in six or seven weeks..encourages the breed of those pretty boys who are regularly trained for the gallows.

1800 Morning Herald 16 Apr. 3/1 At nine o'clock went to St Giles's, as agree with the Officers, and grabbed about fifteen pretty boys, for an exhibition before Sir William the next morning.

1885 Daily News 26 Jan. 3/7 The style termed by irreverent mashers the pretty-boy clip, the style sometimes called the upward drag..at first amazed and amused the neat Japanese damsels.

1893 Glasgow Herald 14 Feb. 3/6 The removal of one to a reformatory and another to another part of the country, while the third..was suspended from school, accounts for Mr. Japp's ‘three pretty boys’.

1931 Amer. Mercury Nov. 353/2 Pretty boys,..the circus bouncers; strong-arm men.

1989 G. Boulard Just Gigolo ii. 38 One such hoodlum was Louis ‘Pretty Boy’ Amberg, who, when he visited the Famous Door, always ordered a table where he could sit with his back to the wall.

2003 B. Brooks Pretty Boy 201 ‘That Pretty Boy Floyd's back in town,’ he says... ‘That son of a bitch is an expert with a machine gun.’

1881 St. Louis (Missouri) Globe-Democrat 31 July 5/1 The ‘pretty boys’, the exquisite young society men, were out in great numbers.

1898 R. Hughes Lakerim Athletic Club 241 Sawed-Off had sniffed scornfully that lawn-tennis was a game fit for nobody but girls and pretty boys.

1946 G. Millar Horned Pigeon ix. 117 A pretty boy with wavy, brown hair flowing glossily over his round head... ‘Who is it?’ ‘The colonnello's bum-boy. A shit.’

1955 M. Allingham Beckoning Lady v. 71 The middle-aged pretty-boy face, complete with protuberant blue eyes and corrugated dark brown hair.

1956 ‘E. McBain’ Cop Hater (1958) xix. 157 Scar tissue hooded his eyes. He owned cauliflower ears and hardly any teeth. His name, of course, was ‘Pretty-Boy Krajak’.

1973 M. Amis Rachel Papers 98 She was referring to the Beatles record (late-middle period—between pretty-boy rock and bleared occult) which had just come to an end.

1995 Select Mar. 62/3 The pretty-boy foursome, naughty but nice, has recurred throughout British pop—often accompanied by its uncouth, unkempt partner.

2005 Tulsa World (Oklahoma) (Nexis) 26 Oct. zm5 The homes and graves of notorious outlaws and lawmen such as ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, Belle Starr, and ‘Hanging Judge’ Isaac Parker and his gang of hard-nosed deputies.