¤ jetless heights

+ Mon, July 26

The Dude

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to know what on earth “dude” means and where it came from.  Words don’t just pop into existence, you know.  Today, from a link from Anil Dash, I have my answer:

For a correct definition of the expression the anxious inquirer has only to turn to the tight-trousered, brief-coated, eye-glassed, fancy-vested, sharp-toes shod, vapid youth who abounds in the Metroplis at present. He is a Dood.

New York Mirror
24 February 1883

The spelling of the term flip-flopped between “dood” and “dude” for a period of time before clearly settling on our present day “dude”.  Or, y’know, “el duderino” if you’re not in the whole brevity thing.

A little more history, it seems the term originated in 1883 in a poem published in the New York World, signed by THE WORLD. You can read much more here.

So, now you know.

2 people have chimed in.
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1 → Shane Cavanaugh  –  (Jul 26 2004,  1:14 PM)

Heh. I saw The Big Lebowski just last night. In elementary school though, I was under the impression that “dude” meant the hair on an elephant’s butt, but, again, I was in elementary school.

2 → walter  –  (Jul 30 2004,  4:19 PM)

I once saw a book that was called ‘a history of dudes’, lying on a shelf, with an illustration of some dudes as they are described in the new york mirror piece, and i just thought: ‘heh’.

I made a picture of it, but i have a few thousand to search through…






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