Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also guyver, gyver) insincerity, pretension; flattery.

1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Nov. 12/2: The ‘even tenor of your way’ / Men talk about – that’s ‘guiver,’ / It’s my hard luck to go my way / Without an even ‘fiver.’.
1886		Sporting Times 27 Mar. 2/5: This reply would have more effectually lowered the furrier’s guiver had he not come across the Rabbi [etc].
1890		‘Morris the Mohel’ ‘Houndsditch Day By Day’ in Sporting Times 11 Jan. 3: Ach, vhat a rubbish! A reg’lar flimsy, frippery hussy—all guiver ’n no geldt.
1898		E. Pugh Tony Drum 194: He’s got enough gyver on him, he has, to float a barge.
1902		J. Mathieu ‘That Day at Boiling Downs’ in Bulletin Reciter 1880–1901 16: You should have seen his guiver when he scalped the bullock-driver.
1906		E. Pugh Spoilers 153: Look ’ere, my pretty puss [...] I’ll ask you not to come any o’ your gyver wi’ me, y’know.
1915		C.J. Dennis ‘The Intro’ in Songs of a Sentimental Bloke 20: It wer’n’t no guyver neither; fer I knoo / That any other bloke ’ad Buckley’s too.
1916		Truth (Melbourne) 8 Jan. 3: [headline] CONSCRIPTION CONSPIRACY. Guff and Guiver of Gammoning Gasbags.
1924		G.H. Lawson Dict. of Aus. Words And Terms 🌐 GUYVER—Pretence.
1938		Mail (Adelaide) 5 Nov. 7/1: Guyver.— Make-believe, still used in Anglo Jewish slang. It is Hebrew for pride, but has now come to mean pretence and is synonymous with the English slang word swank.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 119: Terms like frill, boiled dog, jam and guiver, connoting ‘side’ or affectation.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 62: The mob reckoned I was putting on a guiver, but I knew how these things ought to be run.
1955		D. Niland Shiralee 201: All that flightiness was gone, and the cultured guyver.
1967		J. Wynnum I’m a Jack, All Right 85: I will not have anybody round here giving me the ‘sir’ routine. [...] I had five years too long in the army to wish that sort of guyver on anybody.
1980		Barltrop & Wolveridge Muvver Tongue 89: Empty talk is ‘guiver’. A person who is full of it has ‘too much of what the cat licks its arse with’.

2. as personnification of sense 1.

1910		Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 8 Feb. 5/5: A witness [...] said that a certain person had the reputation of being a guiver [...] ‘I am told a guiver is a cheat.’ [...] ‘Is it Yiddish?’ ‘I am told it is’.
2012		Sport (Adelaide) 11 May 14/4: They Say [...] That Guyver S. says ‘The first man that hits me kisses the ground’.
1928		Horsham Times (Vic.) 14 Sept. 7/4: Oh, strike! just look at ole Tom Croft, ’e takes th’ blinkin’ scone / Now don’t ’e look some guyver with ’is ’orde.

3. (also guyver) a lie.

1895		Truth (Sydney) 28 Apr. 3/3: Mr Reid [...] blandly replied that he never read Truth (Cries of ‘Kid,’ ‘Dicken,’ ‘Guiver,’ etc).
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Oct. 24/2: George Frederick ’ll win it; there’s nothing else in it; / It’s a moral, I tell yer, ’e’ll smother ’em dead. / An’ listen to me, sir, I’m no blanky geyser, / I tell yer I know what the beggar can do; / It’s no bloomin’ guiver; you scrape up a fiver / An’ plank it on now ’e’s at fifty to two.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Oct. 44/1: Never mind that guyver. I want a settlement – where’s the money.
1934		Shoalhaven News and South Coast Districts Advertiser (NSW) 17 Nov. 3/6: What’s all this guiver about the dog sittin’ on the tucker-box?