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. Transcript of “Birthplace of “Dude”” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and...
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. Transcript of “Male and Female Dudes” Hello, you have A...
Dude! We’re used to hearing the word “dude” applied to guys. But increasingly, young women use the word “dude” to address each other. Grant and Martha talk about linguistic research about the meaning and uses of “dude.” Also, the story behind the...
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 called the...
Feel like having a little “hair of the dog”? Grant and Martha explain what dog hair has to do with hangover cures. And what do you call it when random objects form a recognizable image, like a cloud resembling a bunny, or the image of Elvis in a...
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 Thesaurus also has a very...
