Once Guy Fawkes Day was established, children began taking their handmade stuffed effigies—their guys—to the streets in the days leading up to November 5th and begging passersby for "a penny for the guy" to help them purchase fireworks.

In Britain, the early sense of guy was extended from a ragged effigy to someone of grotesque appearance, but when guy landed in the U.S. during the mid-19th century, it had no pejorative connotation, and simply referred to a man. Although we might assume this was because Americans felt no rancor toward would-be traitors to the British crown, in fact, even the English soon came to use guy as a casual and neutral term for man. Over the past forty years, guy has come to be used for both males and females, a shift in usage that further obscures its origin.