Sorry, Californians—the word dude actually comes from New York City, and goes all the way back to the 1800s. This is part of a complete episode.
Research shows that dude, once associated exclusively with males, is often used in the vocative sense to address groups or individuals, including females. This is part of a complete episode.
Puzzle Dude John Chaneski has a quiz about the unofficial terms for familiar things that have less familiar official names. “The Academy Awards of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” for example, are unofficially...
Dude, how’d we ever start using the word dude? The Big Grantbowski traces the word’s origin—it’s over 125 years old. Here’s a poem about dandy dudes from 1883, the year the word zoomed into common use. Ben Zimmer at Visual...
psychoceramics n.— «For a time in the 1950’s and 1960’s, Kreiss sold a line of collectible ceramic figurines featuring odd beatniks and other characters that aficionados on eBay now refer to as psychoceramics. One green fuzzy-haired...
pumpkin lily n. an effete or unskilled person; a novice. Also punkin lily. Editorial Note: Nearly all discovered uses this term, including the 1922 and 1958 citations below, come from descriptions of Teddy Roosevelt, then aged 25, at the time of his...