Etymology of Slang “Dude”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who’s this?

Hi, this is Kevin. I’m calling from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hey, Kevin. How are things in Circle City?

It’s rockin’.

It’s rockin’?

Oh, yeah.

Well, what did you call us about?

Well, I guess maybe it stems from some of the rock culture that I surround myself with, but I’m always interested in the term dude. Dude and hey, dude. It’s like a term of endearment. It’s a greeting, a salutation. It’s a single sentence word, and I just don’t know where it came from.

We have a dude ranch, and so I don’t know where that term ever came into being in popular culture or before that.

Yeah, you’re right. It’s like that beer commercial where all they say is dude. You know what I’m talking about? There was a scene in Finding Nemo like that, too. The turtles did that, didn’t they?

Oh, I don’t remember. Did they?

Dude. Dude. Dude. Dude. Whoa. Dude. Maybe they were doing whoa, though. Whoa. I was like, whoa, whoa. It was a mixture of both.

A mixture of both, was it? Dude is unfortunately an origin, which stands for origin unknown. We do know that dude broke onto the scene of American English in the early 1880s. In 1883, it just exploded. It shows up in newspaper after newspaper, magazine after magazine. It’s just one of those terms that sprang from the earth, fully formed and ready to go.

In January of 1883, there was a poem about the word. So we know that it was common, at least in the end of 1882. There was a poem about the word, and they were kind of making fun of dudes. Dudes were dandies. These were men who dressed in the fashions of the day, just to the hilt. These days, you might call them a metrosexual, but they were the finest clothes, the finest shoes, went to the finest restaurants, smoked the finest tobacco. They were seen as effete and prissy.

And that term, that use of dude, migrated out to the western part of the United States and quickly became used to mean people from the east or newbies from the east, people who didn’t really know the ways of the west or the ways of the country or the ways of the cowboy, people who came from the big city and really just didn’t get it. You know what I’m talking about?

That’s the dude ranch.

That’s the Dude Ranch. Exactly right. Dude Ranch shows up, though, first in the 1920s or so. So Dude Ranch came much later. There are some interesting side notes to Dude. The one thing that really interests me is that we’ve kind of had that split where there’s still a little bit of the use of Dude to mean, how should we put this, as in Dude Ranch, somebody who really isn’t very country-fied. But for the most part, dude is just a normal everyday term of address. It’s like fellow or guy or buddy or Mac or pal. You just say, hey, dude, what’s up, right?

Yeah.

So it’s really changed over the last 100 plus years. So that’s a very condensed history of the word dude. But it’s a great multipurpose word. I’ve talked about this on the show before. I think you remember, Martha. It’s one of those words that’s contagious. If the people around you use dude, you are quickly using the word dude yourself.

Is that true for you, Kevin?

Oh, yeah, dude. And, you know, with the movie The Big Lebowski, that term you exploded even more. You know, the dude abides. And that’s a cult movie now. There are, I guess there are conferences and annual meetups and gatherings around that movie. And people doing, like, I don’t know, what do you call those? Like movie karaoke where they’ll recite the lines of the movie that’s playing on the screen. It’s just crazy. And that movie is just filled with the word dude. I don’t know what the incidence is, but it must be in the thousands.

Dude, yeah, somebody should count them. So that’s the short version, Kevin. How’s that sound?

That’s great.

It’s fascinating how much it can change.

Yeah, it’s come such a long way.

Quite a long way. Well, thank you so much for your call, Kevin.

Thanks, dude.

No problem, buddy.

Bye-bye.

Bye, dude.

Bye.

Martha, one stanza from that poem. It was in the New York World in January of 1883, and it goes, when Darwin’s theory first saw light, the dude he tried to think of, but monkeys being far more bright, he made the missing link of.

Oh, wow.

The whole poem was very derogatory towards the dude, the original fancy dude.

Yeah.

So these are sort of wannabes, cowboy wannabes. Think of people like this today, very, very fashionable. They read the Thursday style section of the New York Times to know how to dress tomorrow. You know what I’m saying?

Sure.

The people who have closets full of clothes that they’ll never wear again because they’re simply not fashionable anymore. Those kinds of people.

Dude. Men, mostly. Dude were men, you know. Dudes were not women. Although, you will find today, just like guy and guys, you’ll find women being addressed as dude these days.

Yeah, I rarely use that word.

Dude?

Dude. I rarely do.

I have a bad case of it. I’m sorry to say it.

Yeah, you have the dudes.

You have the dudes. If you’ve got a question about the history of a word, slang, or otherwise, give us a ring, 1-877-929-9673, or send us an email to words@waywordradio.org.