"guy" used by teens?

Douglas G. Wilson douglas at NB.NET
Thu Mar 3 02:15:38 UTC 2005


>        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



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