[Ads-l] Your guys's garage

[Jonathan Lighter]

I've been hearing women referring to a group of women or a mixed group as
"you guys" for decades. (HDAS has some relevant stuff.)

 And thank you, Ben, for leading the charge on "your guys's" studies.

JL

On Sat, Jan 3, 2026 at 9:10 AM Ben Yagoda <byagoda at udel.edu> wrote:

> Thanks to Jonathan for the excellent research and to Emily (I think) for
> sensing I would be semi-obsessed with this. I somehow missed JL’s 2023 post
> and, a couple of months ago, discussed the Ring ad on Facebook.
>
> One data point to add: my millennial-age daughter refers to my wife and me
> as “you guys” and for some time has used the “your guys’” possessive.
> Currently, she pronounces it “your guyses”; I’m not 100% certain but I
> think she recently switched from “your guys.”
>
> Ben
>
> Linktree of published pieces: https://linktr.ee/benyagoda
>
>
>
> > On Jan 3, 2026, at 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system <
> LISTSERV at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:
> >
> > Date:    Fri, 2 Jan 2026 16:32:54 -0500
> > From:    Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM <mailto:
> wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>>
> > Subject: Re: "Your guys's garage..."
> >
> > And check this out:
> >
> > 1959 Curtis L. Johnson _Hobbledehoy's Hero_ (Cleveland, O.: Pennington
> > Press) 505: "Well," he said, "it's none of your guys' business."
> >
> >
> https://archive.org/details/hobbledehoyshero0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up?q=%22guys%27+business%22
> > <
> https://archive.org/details/hobbledehoyshero0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up?q=%22guys%27+business%22
> >
> >
> > Internet Archive dates this "1949," but the copyright date is clearly
> > "1959."
> >
> > JL
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 4:11 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com
> <mailto:wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Thanks, Emily. That 2002 ex. got me looking further.
> >>
> >> 1980 _Spokesman-Review_ (Spokane, Wash.) (Dec. 7)  A22 [Newspapers.com <
> http://newspapers.com/>]:
> >> The teens blinked the car headlights at the robber, and he pulled into a
> >> tavern parking lot....He said, "What's your guys' problem? You
> following me
> >> or something?"
> >>
> >> That, of course, was 45 years ago - say, two generations?  I would have
> >> said "You guys'" with one / z /.
> >>
> >> Paul Brians, of Washington State [n.b.] University pointed this out in
> his
> >> "Common Errors in English" so long ago as 2008, p. 227:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> https://archive.org/details/common-errors-in-english-paul-brians/page/n227/mode/2up?q=%22your+guys%27s%22
> >>
> >> JL
> >>
> >> On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 3:19 PM Emily Gordon <
> >> 0000205244c4ee9d-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu <mailto:
> 0000205244c4ee9d-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu>> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I had a hunch Ben Yagoda would have written about this, and I was
> right.
> >>> Here’s a piece in New York magazine from 2016 quoting Ben’s Lingua
> >>> Franca piece:
> >>>
> >>> What’s beautiful about language is that people will modify it to suit
> >>> their
> >>> needs, especially when the language is flimsy around a certain use
> case.
> >>> In
> >>> contemporary English, the second-person plural sticks out awkwardly:
> How
> >>> do
> >>> you address a group of people? *You guys, y’all, youse?* It gets even
> >>> flimsier in the possessive: How do you ask a group of people about
> >>> something of theirs, like their bathroom, their phone?
> >>>
> >>> Well, as Ben Yagoda observes
> >>> <
> >>>
> http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/11/01/your-guys-opinion/>
> >>> at
> >>> the *Chronicle of Higher Education*’s Lingua Franca blog, you do what
> >>> Americans do best: innovate. Around the turn of this century, a new
> usage
> >>> popped into the vernacular: *Your guys’. *Like a caller ringing the
> >>> spectacular “Car Talk” radio show: “I wanted to get your guys’
> opinion.”
> >>> Or
> >>> in the millennial tour de force, *Napoleon Dynamite*: “Hey, can I use
> your
> >>> guys’s phone for a sec?” Or what Yagoda has as the earliest entry in
> >>> Google
> >>> Books, from a 2002 novel called *Impeachment: *“Well, it is, but that
> is
> >>> your guys’s problem.”
> >>>
> >>> New York magazine’s “The Cut”:
> >>>
> >>>
> https://www.thecut.com/2016/11/your-guys-is-american-english-at-it-roughspun-best.html
> >>>
> >>> Ben in Lingua Franca:
> >>> https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/your-guys-opinion
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Jan 2, 2026 at 3:55 AM Jonathan Lighter <
> >>> 00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu <mailto:
> 00001aad181a2549-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> And they're still showing it. Is this a common thing? Am I the only
> one
> >>> who
> >>>> cares?
> >>>>
> >>>> JL
> >>>>
> >>>> On Mon, Apr 24, 2023 at 3:40 PM Jonathan Lighter <
> >>> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com <mailto:wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> A commercial for the Ring Video Doorbell features a presumably
> >>>>> mockumentary lady ringing one to warn "Your guys's garage is on
> fire!"
> >>>>> (The accompanying caption spells it "Your guys'," but the
> >>> pronunciation
> >>>> is
> >>>>> "Your guys's.")
> >>>>>
> >>>>> This sounds very weird to me.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> JL
>
>
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>


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