Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English

language.

This is a short bonus episode and something a little different.

Obviously I don't normally do interviews for the podcast, but I recently had a chance

to speak with Alan Metcath about his latest book called The Life of Guy.

Now, if you're a fan of the history of English, you may be familiar with Alan's work.

He's written several books about language in the history of English, he's a professor

of English at McMurray College in Illinois, and he was also the executive secretary of

the American dialect society until his retirement last year.

Now, as I noted, he's written several books about the history of English and English words,

and his latest book explores the fascinating history of the word Guy.

It's an extremely common word in the language today.

We routinely say things like, look at that guy, and hey guys, it's even become a common

pronoun in many people's speech.

We use it to distinguish singular U from plural U when we say U guys, as in, hey, what

are you guys doing?

So the word Guy has essentially become a generic word for a person or group of people, and

it's so common that we might assume it's a very old word, but it isn't.

It's first recorded in English documents in the 1800s, so it's actually a very modern

word.

In fact, it's derived from the name of a specific person.

There was actually a guy named Guy who gave us the word Guy.

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