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guv

nouncommon in dialogue

A form of address to a man, usually a stranger or a superior.

noun

  1. 1

    informalA form of address to a man, usually a stranger or a superior.

    Spare two quid, guv? I 'aven't eaten since yesterday.

    Right away, guv... I mean, sarge.

  2. 2

    informalA male prison officer.

    We cover up the window so the guvs can't see us.

Etymology

Alternative phonetic spelling of gov, short for governor.

Forms

plural
guvs
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).