<i>Sir</i> and <i>Guys</i> in 20th‐ and 21st‐Century American English

ABSTRACT This paper examines the diachronic development of formal and informal address and reference terms in American English as an effect of democratization using the COHA corpus (1900–2020). In focus are two address/reference terms with especially drastic frequency trends in the timespan investigated: the honorific sir , which declines sharply from the 1960s onward, and the familiarizer guys , which shows a strong and continuous increase over the entire period. Based on a qualitative analysis of a random sample of both terms, categorizing speaker—addressee/speaker—referent relationships as well as contextual and tonal factors, we are able to show that guys has expanded from a highly informal, colloquial address term in the early 20th century to one that is acceptable in various neutral contexts in present‐day American English. In contrast, sir becomes confined to relatively restricted settings, particularly those maintaining formal power structures (such as the military) and in service encounters.