In the song "My Guy" by Mary Wells, does she mean "My man" or "My partner of unspecified gender"?

@startingover23 As a personal name yes, a contraction of "Guido" - the full spelling of Ffawkes' Christian name.

Its use as slang in Britain is a fairly recent import from America (where else...?) where it meant "man" and was equivalent to "chap", "bloke" or "fellow"; but you overhear people here using it to refer to or address people of both sexes and all ages.

@startingover23 One troll on here thought the word "guy" was somehow gender-neutral and when I corrected him he got all argumentative and trollish. He wouldn't give me direct answers when I questioned him.

@ArishMell How did you get that comment to post before mine? It wasn't there when I posted my comment.

@ArishMell Ah, I think you hear about 'guys', which I'm not going to blow your minds too much by stating that generally it covers BOTH sexes, as used by saying..

[i]"Hey, you guys..."[/i]

Who said English is complex?!?

😘🇬🇧😘

@CassandraSissy If a guy is one man, then LOGICALLY guys must be two or more men. It doesn't get any simpler.

@Crazychick Just chance I expect. I'd seen Startingover's post very quickly after reading your original post, but perhaps the order in which they appear if posted closely together, might be affected by technical matters such as server speeds and our broadband rates.

@Crazychick But 'Guys' [i]also[/i] means a collection of girls!!!

That's what I'm saying, sweetie!

😘

@CassandraSissy Not where I live, it doesn't. In fact, most of us find it offensive to be referred to as guys.

@CassandraSissy Okay, but in the context of this song, which was a love song performed by a woman in 1964, there's no way guy meant anything other than a male human being. Context, people.

@LordShadowfire It means what the dictionary says it means and that's it.

@Crazychick well said

@Royrogers Thank you, Roy. :)