Introduction

Abstract English terrorist Guy Fawkes is the source of our present-day words “guy” and its plural “guys.” After almost succeeding in lighting 36 barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords on November 5, 1605, Fawkes was put to death within two short months. But his name lived on, thanks to the act of Parliament declaring every November 5 henceforth as a day of thanksgiving to God for delivering them from Gunpowder Treason. From the start, November 5 was a popular holiday, concluding with bonfires where effigies of Guy, soon called “guys,” were burned. Thus the way opened for “guy” to refer by extension to the lowest sort of man, then in due course to a man of odd or ridiculous dress and appearance, then gradually, at least in the United States, to any man of any class or bearing, even fully respectable. And then, even more strangely, the masculine “guy” became gender-neutral “guys.” And so it became the present-day standard second-person plural pronoun, taking the place of plural “you,” which had taken the place of singular “thou,” which had disappeared from everyday use in the 1700s. It was not until the later 20th century that “you guys” was inclusive enough to be the standard second-person plural, but that space had remained unfilled, and “guys” or “you guys” fit in so well that nowadays we hardly even notice.