from the
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Hey, you guys!
"That’s the explanation for guy. But how do we get you guys, our most common way of addressing to more than one person?
The answer is grammatical. Guy is a noun. But in you guys, it takes on the guise of a pronoun.
And why is that? Blame it on an epidemic of politeness among speakers of the English language.
In the 18th century, speakers of English became so polite that they used the polite form you to address not just several people but even just one. Instead of thou art we said you are, even to one person.
But we still like to distinguish between singular and plural in our pronouns, so speakers of English invented a variety of ways to make a plural form of you. Some added –s in various shapes to make youse, you’ns, or yinz. Others, especially in the American South, added all to make you all and y’all.
And then, around the middle of the past century, people began adding guys to make you guys. Until then, guy referred just to men and boys, but the combination you guys acted as a plural second-person pronoun and could be applied to humans of any gender.
No, guys didn’t actually become a pronoun. It remains a noun. It’s just that the combination of you and guys acts like a plural pronoun. Funny thing, language!
Once that was established, you guys could be shortened to guys but still function as a second-person pronoun. “You guys, get to work” could be expressed as “Guys, get to work” without being restricted to males.
And so we have you guys today as the most widely used plural of you, at least in the United States. If you’re someone, especially someone female, who doesn’t like being addressed as “you guys” when you’re dining with a friend in a restaurant, either because it’s slangy or because guys ought to be men—you can blame it on Guy Fawkes. But don’t blame him too much, because if we’d kept thou we’d never have you guys.