A New York City caller wonders why we refer to clothing as duds. The term dates back to the 1300s, when the word dudde referred to a cloak or mantle of coarse cloth. Over time, it came to refer to shabby clothing and eventually acquired a more neutral meaning of simply “clothes.” The earlier sense of “ragged” or “inferior” may also be reflected in the term dud, denoting something that fails to function. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why Are Clothes Called “Duds”?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Yeah, hi.
This is Jerry Farris calling from Hills Kitchen, New York.
Hi, Jerry.
How you doing?
Hills Kitchen.
Somewhere up there in the 50s on the west side, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
I live on 48th Street.
48th Street.
Right between 8th and 9th.
I know that area well.
Well, the other day I was out and I got caught in the rain.
And I thought to myself as I was heading back home that I needed to go and change my duds.
And I thought to myself, why am I calling clothes duds?
And I was pretty sure that it had nothing to do with misfired ordinance or firecrackers that didn’t go off or something like that.
It just doesn’t seem related to clothing.
And I thought, well, I’m going to just have to check with Martha and Grant on this one because I can’t find anything on it.
And the only other thing I was thinking was I remember there was a laundry product called Suds.
But I think duds is spelled D-U-D-S, not D-U-D-Z as suds would be S-U-D-Z.
Right.
So I thought maybe you could help me on this.
Well, we can offer a little bit of help.
The origin of duds is not really clear.
We can tell you it’s a super old word.
It goes back to around 1300 or so.
Oh, I wasn’t around then.
You weren’t?
I didn’t pick it up then.
Well, I maybe picked it up in an earlier life.
It could have been.
Yeah, if you were running around in 1300, you would have worn a cloak or a mantle called a dud, D-U-D-D-E.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
It was usually a coarse cloth, not anything particularly appealing.
And then later in the plural, duds came to mean ragged clothing.
And over time, it just came to mean generally clothes and personal effects.
So it’s been around a very, very, very long time.
So it doesn’t come from the idea of dud, like munitions failing to go off, although it may have influenced the term dud.
How would that be?
In that sense.
Well, for a while, dud also meant something that was sort of counterfeit.
And therefore I could see how that would be applied eventually to something that doesn’t do what it was promised to do.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so it’s generally a kind of pejorative term, or at least it was early on.
But for clothes now, it’s kind of neutral.
Yeah, my duds.
Jerry, thank you so much for your call, dude.
Thank you very much for clearing that up. That’s good to know.
All right. Take care.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
So pervasive throughout English, right?
Duds.
Duds is pretty common, but it does sound like modern slang.
I know, doesn’t it?
I was really surprised to learn that it goes all the way back to the 14th century.
Yeah.
1300s, 14th century.
That’s incredible.
But how many of the words, they have to start somewhere.
They do, right?
Duds.
D-U-D-S, duds, close.
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