G-Man (slang)

G-Man (short for Government Man) is a slang term for Special agents of the United States Government. It is specifically used as a term for a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent.

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, its first known use in America was in 1928. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for the American usage is 1930 from a book on Al Capone by FD Pasley.

The phrase may have been inspired by its use in Ireland by G Division of seven sections of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. G division was a plainclothes unit that specifically dealt with investigation of subversion and terrorism during the Irish Civil War.

In FBI mythology, the nickname is held to have originated during the arrest of gangster George "Machine Gun" Kelly by agents of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), a forerunner of the FBI, in September 1933. Finding himself unarmed, Kelly supposedly shouted "Don't shoot, G-Men! Don't shoot, G-Men!" This event is dramatized in the 1959 film The FBI Story and this dramatization is referenced in the 2011 film J. Edgar. The encounter with Kelly is similarly dramatized in the 1973 film Dillinger.

With the popularity of film noir and gangster films during the 1940s and 50s, "G-Men" became a popular slang term for the FBI.