Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to tease, to fool, to mock.

1841		W.J. Neale Paul Periwinkle 168: ‘Guying you, you rascal! what’s that? what’s guying you?’ ‘Why, gumming me, to be sure; it’s all the same.’.
1878		Ben Hogan Life and Adventures of Ben Hogan 26: Ben was too much in earnest to admit of the suspicion that he was ‘guying’.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Jun. 6/1: The vast audience was moved till one of the crowd […], a man who had gazed on much wine that was of all colours, sonorously remarked – ‘’Ornpipe, Orton!’ Then it was all over, and whatever his wrongs and grievances were, the possessor of them was gracefully guyed off the stage.
1888		World (N.Y.) 4 Aug. 3/1: They guyed the red stockings and cheered black.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 14 Jan. 4/5: The Collingwood ‘flats’ [...] promptly arranged themselves to ‘guy’ Mr Barton.
1899		R. Whiteing No. 5 John Street 241: We guy our betters in slangy overtones, and in short, make three miles of rude remarks.
1907		J. London Road 70: The first game was played and the coon was stuck. He took the small milk-tin and climbed down the bank, while we sat above and guyed him.
1911		L. Stone Jonah 2: Their chief diversion was to guy the pedestrians, leaping from insult to swift retaliation if one resented their foul comments.
1914		E. Pugh Cockney At Home 169: I knew how everybody’d guy after the cocky way I’d been carrying on.
1925		E. Jervis 25 Years in Six Prisons 85: But, Knight, you could not drive a pair-horse van togged up like that! Why, everybody would have guyed you.
1933		J. Spenser Limey 112: It is the custom to ‘guy’ the customers.