[Ads-l] Your guys's garage

[Alice Faber]

At least 6 decades, in my experience. I recall Junior High School 
discussions among my friends about whether "you guys" could refer to an 
all-girls group. There were *strong* feelings on both sides. This would 
have been in the mid-1960s.

Alice


On 1/3/26 1:53 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> 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
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org