The definition of “dude” was on trial in 1884.
In Montreal, a man was brought to court for calling another a “dude” in public, The New York Times reported. The counsel for the defendant asked the plaintiff: “What is the meaning of the word ‘dude’?”
The plaintiff answered: “I consider it an insult.” Upon being pressed, he added, “Well, a vulgarly dressed man who tries to dress well and be a gentleman, but can’t.”
During the late 19th century, “dude” was popularized, and its meaning hotly debated. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word’s first formal definition was: “A man who shows an ostentatious regard for fashion and style in regard to dress or appearance; a dandy, a fop.” Many felt it was a term of mockery. In July 1883, a Times article asked in a headline: “Is ‘Dude’ Defamatory?” A man who had been called “the offensive epithet” in a local journal challenged the offender to a duel.
The origin story of “dude” is unclear, but a research project provided a theory. After years of exploring archival citations, a team that included the etymologist Gerald Cohen, a professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, who published the findings, found that “dude” probably came from “Yankee Doodle,” and the British slang “fopdoodle,” meaning a foolish dandy. “To be a ‘dude’ at the time, you had to be young, slender, brainless and imitating what they thought was high British culture,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview. “They became a staple of humor.”
By the early 1900s, East Coast city guys were known as dudes. As they traveled west, the “dude ranch” emerged. “The resorts where these city slickers would stay for the authentic Western experience were called dude ranches,” said Jess Zafarris, an etymologist, adding, “They were definitely the fancy tourists of the time.” As defined in a 1942 article, dude ranches were “genuine ranches where genuine cowboys punch genuine cattle and the ‘dudes’ are not of absolute necessity dandified dilettantes.”
In the 1930s and ’40s, young Black men in Harlem and Pachucos, young Mexican American men, subverted the idea of dandy dressing by wearing zoot suits. These groups also redefined “dude” as a word of camaraderie. “It was a solidarity marker that was co-opting this meaning of a sharp dressed man,” said Valerie Fridland, a sociolinguist and the author of “Like, Literally, Dude.” She added that “it was like saying, ‘we’re cool, we’re together in this.’” By the 1960s, “dude” was being used in Black communities to mean any cool man.
Around this time “dude” was adopted by countercultural groups, including surfing subcultures, and took on the connotation of an easygoing guy. (You may recall the scene in 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” in which Jeff Spicoli, a stoner and surfer portrayed by Sean Penn, addressed the pizza delivery guy as “dude.”)
By the 1970s, the word had “exploded into the mainstream,” Ms. Fridland said. It also began to appear more in The Times. In 1970 a reporter wrote about a concert where Aretha Franklin told the audience “about this very gifted dude whose game is so strong she calls him ‘Dr. Feelgood.’” A 1973 article referred to Secretariat, the racehorse, as a “flashy dude.” A “semiofficial glossary” assembled by the U.S. Air Force that appeared in The Times that year helped acquaint returning prisoners of the Vietnam War with current slang: “Dude” was defined as “any male” and was more common than “cat.”
By the 1980s, “dude” could be used as an interjection to express surprise or delight. And it was used in greetings: A 1989 article about American regional accents had the headline “Are Accents Out? Hey, Dude, Like NEH-oh Way!”
In a 1994 article in the journal of American Speech, Richard A. Hill wrote that “dude” had replaced “totally” as the “word most often uttered by American youth.” In 1998, “The Big Lebowski,” starring Jeff Bridges, gave “dude” another inflection point. Though per a Times article from that year, “dude” was already losing its luster: “A walking anachronism in the digitalized 90’s, Mr. Bridges’s affable anti-hero goes by a nickname synonymous with 70’s coolness that later became an embarrassing cliché: the Dude.”
Many slang words go out of style after hitting a peak of popularity and are replaced by something new. Ms. Fridland said the 1990s marked “the beginning of the end of the dude.”
Last year, a Times Crossword offered the clue, “Dude, in modern slang.” The answer? “Bruh.”
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