[sing.] "guy"

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:04 PM -0500 3/2/05, James C Stalker 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."  (HDAS, of course, has the citation as well.)  I
>thought the female reference was much later, like more in our time, you see
>what I'm sayin'.  In querying my classes, over several years,  they
>(male and female) are willing to accept mixed gender groups and all female
>groups being referred to as "guys," by either male or female speakers.
>But guy in the singular is never applicable to a female.
>
Never?  Well, hardly ever.
This claim is a bit too strong as it stands.  Consider the following
counterexamples:

(1)  Steppenwolf was four people and I'm just one guy.
-actress Joan Allen hosting Saturday Night Live, 11/14/98, cited in
Clancy, Steven J. (1999),  "The ascent of guy" [American Speech 74:
282-97], p. 287.


(2)  -Your first mistake was telling him [= an abusive caller] your name.
        -Yeah, but there were only two of us on the phones, and they
would have figured it was me because I'm a girl and the other guy is
a guy.


(3)  from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (the 1992 movie):  Merrick
(Donald Sutherland) tells Buffy (Kristy Swanson) that she is "The
Chosen One" who must fulfill her vampire-killing destiny.  But she's
not really into her mission and it falls to Pike (Luke Perry) to
remind her of her true calling.
        Pike:   But you're the guy! The chosen guy!
        Buffy:  I am the chosen one, and I choose to go shopping.

(4)  I like sex just as much as the next guy.
-Kate Austen on "Chicago Hope"

They tend to involve locutions like "the other guy", "the next guy",
"the chosen guy", "just one guy", and so on, none of them strictly
referential.  There's often an explicit or implicit contrast that
doesn't involve gender.  But the fact remains that these (and many
others) do involve singular instances of "guy" that are either
female-specific or sex-neutral.

Larry