The guy who writes this stuff is writing this particular piece on the evening of the 5th of November; fireworks are whizzing and cracking outside his window, and here and there in back gardens and public open spaces people watching firework displays are keeping warm by edging closer to the enormous bonfires that stand as the focal point (oh, did you know that the words focal and focus come from the Latin for “fireplace”? – ok, that is another story) of the festivities.
On top of each of these big bonfires sits an improvised figure made of rags or old pillows and dressed in someone’s unwanted old clothes. That’s the guy. I’m just a guy. And all of these festivities are in honour (although that’s really not the right word) of a particular guy called Guy.
I always feel rather ashamed when the time comes to explain to foreigners why we have big bonfire-and-fireworks parties in England on the November the 5th. “Well,” I explain, “there was this Catholic counter-revolutionary, Guy Fawkes, in the early 17th Century who planned, with his friends, to create a huge explosion to destroy the Houses of Parliament, with the (Protestant) King in it, and on the 5th of November we celebrate the day when he was… horribly executed, after… being… horribly tortured… Don’t look at me like that!” Even in times when “wars against terror” are made to seem heroic, it really doesn’t sound very nice to be celebrating the bloodthirsty suppression of an attempt to challenge the status quo, and – specifically – celebrating the brutal execution of a human being, by making a model of that human being and setting fire to it, whilst baking potatoes in the same flames…*
But there we are: the English aren’t very good at communal outdoor celebrations and, until recent years, we had not managed to find any other excuse, at any other time of the year, for making big firework displays; it provides a bit of light, warmth and excitement at a cold, miserable time of year when it has just, suddenly, started to get dark much earlier; and so the tradition stuck.
And, speaking of traditions, when I was a child, an incredibly long time ago, for a day or two before the bonfires were lit, children still used to stand in the streets displaying the life-size rag-wearing dolls that they had made (for purposes of festive incineration), and request/extort cash rewards from passers-by (theoretically for the purchase of fireworks), with the words “Penny for the guy?”
Born out of this tradition, the term guy, referring to a real live human being, was originally applied to grotesque, badly-dressed specimens (the Oxford English Dictionary uses the word “person” in its definition, although all the examples it lists, mostly from 19th century literature, refer to men or boys). Somehow, however, from the mid-19th century onwards, the word became – initially in American English – a generic term for any male person.
We had a number of general words for men and boys in British English to compete with guy – principal among them being fellow and chap – but I think you know by now what tends to happen in any competition between American and British terminology: as the 20th century progressed and turned into the 21st, chap and fellow became words identified with older generations, old-fashioned formality, and charmingly insular English habits, guy with youth culture, dynamic, informal discourse, and, well, real modern life.
Guy remains a word that only really functions in an informal register – don’t try to use it in academic essays - and, contrary to the belief of many non-native speakers, who seem to think it means young person, continues to reflect only the gender (male) of the person referred to, and the age (young-ish, young-thinking or young-acting) of the user. (The exception is the vocative use - "Come on, guys!" can be addressed to males and/or females.)
We do have a kind of equivalent in British English – bloke: a very informal term for a man or boy. The main difference is that, as usual, the American-born term guy is widely heard on both sides of the Atlantic, while only the most determinedly Anglophile American would attempt to include bloke in his vocabulary. His friends would probably think he was trying too hard to be clever or witty – being, in other words, a wise guy.
*I should really point out that, although the Guy Fawkes mask has recently become a symbol of some radical revolutionary movements, there was nothing progr
essive about Fawkes himself. He championed the authority of the Pope - not exactly a revolutionary figure - and had fought with the Spanish to put down Protestant reformers in the Low Countries.
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