lad,old

   A variant of ‘old boy’, normally used by one man to another in a friendly way. There are examples of its use in the Shakespearean plays, e.g. The Taming of the Shrew (4:i), where Nathaniel greets Grumio with ‘How now, old lad!’ and Titus Andronicus (4:ii), where Aaron says ‘Look how the black slave smiles upon the father, As who would say “Old lad, I am thine own.”’ ‘Lad’ is also frequently used as a vocative in the plays on its own in the singular or plural form, and in collocations such as ‘my honest lads’, ‘dear lad’, ‘young lad’, ‘good lads’. ‘Old lad’ continues to be reasonably well used in modern times. Kingsley Amis, in Girl, 20, makes it the term regularly used by Sir Roy Vandervane to address a male friend. There are two further examples of its use in Doctor in the House, by Richard Gordon; one in Funeral in Berlin, by Len Deighton; two in A Kind of Loving, by Stan Barstow.