"guy" used by teens?

[Peter A. McGraw]

Then there are the lines in the lord high executioner's aria in The Mikado
(enumerating potential candidates for execution who "never would be
missed"):


"And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy,
"And who 'doesn't think she waltzes, but would rather like to try'"

I assumed it simply meant she dressed like a man, but was told once that
"guy" in the Victorian era--and thus in this passage--had some specific,
different meaning which unfortunately I've forgotten.

Could it be a reference to the Guy Fawkes effigy of OED sense 1.a.:  "The
figure is habited in grotesquely ragged and ill-assorted garments"?

Or was my informant misinformed and it simply meant a woman who dressed
like a man, but who is called a "guy" here just to provide a rhyme with
"try"?

G&S are obviously evoking some then-current stereotype which is unknown to
modern audiences (or at least to me), making the verse obscure.

Peter Mc.

--On Wednesday, March 2, 2005 9:15 PM -0500 "Douglas G. Wilson"
<douglas at NB.NET> wrote:

>>        Nonetheless, I went looking in Farmer and Henley to see what they
>> had to
>> tell us.  I was surprised to find an 1837 citation in which a female is
>> referred to as a "guy."
>
> This is of course not exactly the same "guy" = "chap"/"fellow" used today
> (HDAS sense 2), but rather the ancestral "guy" = "grotesque person" or so
> (HDAS sense 1) which I believe has been obsolete in the US for almost 100
> years.
>
> -- Doug Wilson



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************