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I have noticed that many native English speakers use the word guy in reference to a number?

Is this slang or right way of using this word to mean a number?

  • note: I didn’t find any definition in any of the dictionaries that give the meaning as numbers
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    Could you provide an example sentence? English speakers will refer to almost anything - tangible or intangible - as "guy", including algebraic expressions. This is widely done but is not very formal.
    – urnonav
    Commented Sep 10, 2019 at 20:37
  • You are right. i haven’t seen it in a written form. However, i hear this very often from native English speakers in math in university. I hear this from KHAN Academy in Youtube videos of math explanations as well. @urnonav
    – Bavyan Yaldo
    Commented Sep 10, 2019 at 20:41
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    Can you transcribe the sentence, and give a link to the video?
    – mRotten
    Commented Sep 10, 2019 at 20:49
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    This is correct. And I agree with @urnonav. When I was in grad school in the US in the late 80s, "guy" could refer to a mathematical object of many different kinds, not just a number, an element of many kinds of a set. A particularly vivid memory to me personally involves the first question in my candidacy exam (aka quals), when I referred to an element of a group as "what about this guy?" (pointing at a dot on the chalkboard) at a critical point.
    – Jyrki Lahtonen
    Commented Sep 10, 2019 at 21:26
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    I don't think it's specifically defined anywhere because it's just a personification, and the usual definition applies (whether what's being personified is male or not is not really important here, although maybe it'd be a little odd to say she to reference one such guy).
    – user3395
    Commented Sep 10, 2019 at 21:39

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Sure, guy is sometimes used to refer to inanimate stuff, at least in some dialects.

The Dialect blog says:

The last time I discussed the word ‘guy,’ a generic term meaning ‘man,’ I mentioned a rather fascinating way in which the word has evolved in American dialects. ‘Guy’ has come to become synonymous, in some situations, with ‘thing.’ For example, rather than asking someone to pass the frying pan, you might ask,

‘Could you pass me that guy over there?’

My dialect of American English has both this sense of guy and also gender neutral “(you) guys”, but the latter is much more common.

Here’s another definition of inanimate guy from Urban Dictionary:

A word that can be used instead of any noun. Especially helpful when for some reason you can't quickly remember the names of things.

Can you grab that guy over there? I need to light this guy.

In my experience inanimate guy is almost exclusively used in speech with gestures so it’s hard to find examples online.

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    At school 50 years ago in England my chemistry teacher used to say (e.g.) "Among the elements, calcium is an odd chap".
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Sep 11, 2019 at 8:42

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