We
pledge to keep these pages current!
2008-
Brings an entirely new server.....We hope to the work of
re-linking things as soon as possible but it is a lot of work! So please check
back from time to time....Thank you for your patience!Will the real Guy please stand up!
Or perhaps it was CECIL Guy or Guido: that is the question.What about the contemporary word "guy"? Was Guy baptised Guido or Guy, or is Guido just a translation? Was he given that name because of uglyness? Perhaps someone will go to York and check baptismal records (see Cast Of Characters)
Guy:
1. A guide rope: OFF gui or guie, a guide, from OF-MF guier, to guide, from Frankish uitan, witan, to indicate a direction: cf E guide, q.v. at vide, para 10. 2.a ragged, ludicrous- even grotesque- effigy of Guy Fawkes of the Gunpowder Plot: F Guy, var Gui: LL Uitus (ML Vitus), as in -St. Vitus's dance-, rendering F -danse de Saint-Guy- (cf the E var St. Guy's dance): the child martyr Vitus was invoked by epileptics, said to have danced before his image.Eric Partridge, Origins, Macmillan, New York,1959
From the Word of the Day 11/1/00James I of England, a Protestant, was a very unpopular king who managed to anger both the
Protestants and the Catholics. The Catholics were especially incensed because James had
been exiling Jesuits from England. A group of Catholics, among them a man named Guy
Fawkes (also known as Guido when he enlisted in the Spanish Army and served in the
Netherlands), came up with a scheme, known as the Gunpowder Plot, to blow up the king
along with Parliament on November 5, 1605. They hoped that, in the ensuing chaos, they
could put a Catholic king on the throne. However, someone tipped off King James. Although
not the leader of the plot, the unfortunate Guy was found in the basement of the House of
Lords in the company of 36 barrels of gunpowder. He was arrested, signed a confession
implicating others, and was hanged for treason along with six of his co-conspirators in
January 1606. That same year, November 5 became a national holiday.
Guy Fawkes Day
is still celebrated with fireworks and bonfires. Children parade through
the
streets carrying
effigies called guys and asking passersby for "a penny for the guy." The
guys, which
are dressed in rags, are burned on the bonfires on the night of November
5th.
The effigies
were not always those of Guy Fawkes; in the early days, figures of other
unpopular people,
especially the pope, were also paraded through the streets and burned on
the bonfires.
So, guy originally
referred to an effigy of Guy Fawkes or some other detested person. Trollope
wrote in The
Last Chronicle of Barset (1867): "What are you doing there, dressed up
in that
way like a guy?"
Because the guys were dressed in old, ill-matched clothes, the word also
came to mean
'a person of grotesque appearance or dress': "The gentlemen are all 'rigged
Tropical' --
grisly Guys some of them turn out" (Julia Charlotte Maitland, Letters from
Madras
during the Years
1836-39 by a Lady). The word had a pejorative sense through much of the
19th century:
"I wouldn't speak to you in the street for fear of disgracing you; I am
such a
poor little
guy to be addressing a gentleman like you" (C. Reade, Hard Cash, 1863).
A guy was
a person who
was an object of ridicule.
The word guy
crossed the Atlantic late in the 19th century and, in American usage, came
to
mean simply
'a fellow' or 'a man': "You're the guy that had the fight in that saloon"
(Ade,
Chicago Stories,
1894). The main guy is no longer in common use, but around the turn of
the
century, it
meant, according to Maitland's Slang Dictionary of 1891, 'the chief or
leader of any
organization'.
Various writers have lamented the ubiquitousness of guy in American speech:
"Guy ... must
be one of the most frequently used words in America. It it a lazy man's
word,
reducing all
adult males to simulacra among whom there is no need to make a distinction"
(Evans &
Evans, Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, 1957).
By the 1940s,
guy was being used to refer to a person of either sex: "She's a good guy.
I'm
glad she's on
my side" says a character in the 1950 film Lonely Place. It is commonly
used to
refer to a mixed
group, but "a guy thing" still means 'male'.
Guy has had a
few other meanings over the years. In 19th-century America, it referred
to a
circus or carnival
patron and also to a person who acted as a dupe in a confidence game.
Although guy
meaning 'a prank' is no longer common, guy can be a verb meaning either
'to
ridicule' --
"Say, he'll be guyed about this for years to come" (Stephen Crane, Complete
Stories,1898)
or 'to hoax' -- "King Arthur ... had begun to suspect that he was being
guyed"
(T. Berger,
Arthur Rex, 1978).
The guy in "guy
wire," by the way, has nothing to do with "guy" it comes from Old French
guier 'to guide'.
Any etymologists in the house? Are we to take the application of the term Guy to Mr. Fawkes as an insult or as a title of leadership? You tell us! Mail us!
