Search us!

Search The Word Detective and our family of websites:

This is the easiest way to find a column on a particular word or phrase.

To search for a specific phrase, put it between quotation marks.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments are OPEN.

We deeply appreciate the erudition and energy of our commenters. Your comments frequently make an invaluable contribution to the story of words and phrases in everyday usage over many years.

Please note that comments are moderated, and will sometimes take a few days to appear.

 

 

shameless pleading

 

 

 

 

Guy

Cellar feller.

Dear Word Detective:  Can you tell me the derivation of the word “guy” as in “Guys and Dolls.”  I am told it is a contraction of a Yiddish word meaning “fellow” or “man.”  It apparently reflects the growth of the language from Hebrew via Russia and German. — Brian Steven.

That’s a good question, but I think we’re going to have to change your “apparently” to “supposedly.”  You don’t say where you heard or read that theory about “guy” being a contraction of a Yiddish word, but it’s not true.  The only explanation I can think of for that misunderstanding is that someone noticed the resemblance of “guy” to “goy,” which is a designation used among Jews for a person who is not Jewish, i.e., a gentile.  “Goy” in this usage  comes from the Hebrew word “goy” (plural “goyim”) meaning “people, nation.”  Interestingly, “gentile” also comes from a word meaning “people” or “nation,” in this case the Latin “gens.”

Meanwhile, back at “guy,” the real story is a fascinating one.  The first thing to note is that “guy” is not only an informal English term for “man” or “fellow.”  “Guy” is also a proper name for men, pronounced “gy” (with a hard “g”) in English, but “gee” (also with a hard “g”) in French.  I mention French because the name “Guy” is from Norman French and is related to the same Germanic root that gave us “guide.”  And that, in turn, is relevant because the same “guide”  root gave us the English term “guy wire” (or line, or rope), the long cables that keep tall antennas and the like from falling over.

The fact that “Guy” is a proper name is important because “guy” in the sense of “fellow” is an eponym, a word formed from the proper name of a person, in this case a person named “Guy.”  This original “guy” was Guy Fawkes, who in 1605 was hanged for his involvement in what came to be known as the Gunpowder Plot.  Fawkes and his co-conspirators had planned to blow up England’s Houses of Parliament while King James I and many of the aristocracy were inside.  Fawkes was apprehended at the last moment, in the act of lighting the fuses on barrels of powder that had been smuggled into a cellar beneath Parliament.

The foiling of the Gunpowder Plot made November 5, “Guy Fawkes Day,” a national holiday in England.  The crude effigies of Fawkes burned on bonfires amid raucous celebration were known as “guys,” and “guy” eventually came to mean “a figure or person of bizarre appearance.”  Since the story of Guy Fawkes was not well known in the US, however, we adopted “guy” in the 19th century as just a synonym for “man” or “fellow.”  In the past few years, “guy” has become largely gender-neutral, and waiters in particular seem fond of addressing a table of men and women as “you guys.”

Incidentally, in the popular 2006 film “V for Vendetta,” the character “V” wears a mask based on a caricature of Guy Fawkes, and the film begins, as I recall, by invoking a popular poem written in the wake of Fawkes’ plot: “Remember, remember the fifth of November, The gunpowder, treason and plot, I know of no reason, Why the gunpowder treason, Should ever be forgot.”

10 comments to Guy

  • David

    Unfortunately Guy Fawkes Day is not a national holiday in the UK. We do like to burn a good effigy though. Guy Fawkes night is often called bonfire night and the fire is usually accompanied with fireworks (gunpowder, you see). Great fun. Warm clothes and treacle toffee both help to jolly things along.

  • Dave A

    Visiting St. George, Utah, late ’90s, during spring break: I was seated outside an ice cream shop, near a table of four high school girls who were watching other teenagers cruise the strip. Finally, one of the girls said, “C’mon, guys, if we don’t go, we’re not gonna meet any guys!”

  • Lee Carver

    When was the casual use of “guy” for “man” accepted? Its use in my novel, based in WWII, has been questioned. Would it be appropriate in that time frame?

  • GUY

    I AM 85 TODAY MY FIRST NAME IS GUY MY FATHERS NAME WAS GUY THE NAME STARTED IN ENGLAND WHEN GUY FAWKES WAS HANGED OTHER THAN BIBICAL NAMES IT IS A NAME THAT HAD MEANING

  • Slightly out on the verse : 2nd line, no “the” : 3rd line, “I see no reason”. Try saying it aloud and you’ll see that it scans better, which is why it survived.

  • I have only ever heard it expressed as a term for a ‘mate’ by the yanks, can you please advise when the yanks first adoptred the word as a general term?

  • Tom Noddy

    For the person asking whether the use of the term “guy” for a man was current during WWII (as depicted in his/her novel), we can say this … Damon Runyon used the word often in his writing and Runyon died in 1946.

  • Elaine

    Please excuse me, but the Spanish word “gallo”, pronounced guy-o, meaning rooster or cock, is a much older source for the term guy, meaning man. Its application as a nickname for Guido may be a more recent development. The same word is used for rooster or cock in Italian but pronounced gall-o.

  • Marpinderkarpinder

    Well done Elaine, I suspect you are very near the mark. In West and South Yorkshire (especially Barnsley and environs) an affectionate or endearing greeting in the street is still quite often ‘Ey up Cock!’ or perhaps even ‘Ey up Cock spahrra (sparrow)!’ if the speaker is older. Slightly bewildering on first hearing to people from the colonies (I’m originally from Canada) but a beauty of a greeting when you realise it’s really a kindly moniker. Remarkable how time manipulates language.

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Please support
The Word Detective


unclesamsmaller
by Subscribing.

 

Follow us on Twitter!

 

 

 

Makes a great gift! Click cover for more.

400+ pages of science questions answered and explained for kids -- and adults!

FROM ALTOIDS TO ZIMA, by Evan Morris