![]() ![]() This more general meaning of "dude" started creeping into the mainstream in the mid-1970s. The female equivalent was "dudette" or "dudess", but these have both fallen into disuse and "dude" is now also used as a unisex term. In the early 1960s, dude became prominent in surfer culture as a synonym of guy or fella. The term was also used as a "job description", such as "bush hook dude" as a position on a railroad in the 1880s. By the late 20th to early 21st century, dude had gained the ability to be used in the form of expression, whether that be disappointment, excitement, or loving and it also widened to be able to refer to any general person no matter race, sex, or culture. Eventually, lower class schools with a greater mix of subcultures allowed the word to spread to almost all cultures and eventually up the class ladders to become common use in the U.S. began using it more frequently while again deriving it from the type of dress and eventually using it as a descriptor for common male and sometimes female companions. The slang eventually had gradual decline in usage until the early to mid 20th century when other subcultures of the U.S. and traveled between borders, variations of the slang began to pop up such as the female versions of dudette and dudines however, they were short lived due to dude also gaining a neutral gender connotation and some linguists see the female versions as more artificial slang. Īs the word gained popularity and reached the coasts of the U.S. An inverse of these uses of "dude" would be the term " redneck," a contemporary American colloquialism referring to poor farmers and uneducated persons, which itself became pejorative, and is also still in use. This usage of "dude" was still in use in the 1950s in America, as a word for a tourist-of either sex-who attempts to dress like the local culture but fails. The implicit contrast is with those persons accustomed to a given frontier, agricultural, mining, or other rural setting. Dude ranches began to appear in the American West in the early 20th century, for wealthy Easterners who came to experience the " cowboy life". This use is reflected in the dude ranch, a guest ranch catering to urbanites seeking more rural experiences. Thus "dude" was used to describe the wealthy men of the expansion of the United States during the 19th century by ranch-and-homestead-bound settlers of the American Old West. The implication of an individual who is unfamiliar with the demands of life outside of urban settings gave rise to the definition of dude as a "city slicker", or "an Easterner in the West". In The Home and Farm Manual (1883), author Jonathan Periam used the term "dude" several times to denote an ill-bred and ignorant but ostentatious man from the city. Ī variation of this was a "well-dressed man who is unfamiliar with life outside a large city". The word was used by cowboys to unfavorably refer to the city dwellers. The word was used to refer to American Easterners, specifically referring to a man with "store-bought clothes". Among the first published descriptions defining "dude" Chicago Tribune, 25 February 1883 This meaning of the word, though rarely consciously known today, remains occasionally in some American slang, as in the phrase "all duded up" for getting dressed in fancy clothes. The best known of this type is probably Evander Berry Wall, who was dubbed "King of the Dudes" in 1880s New York and maintained a reputation for sartorial splendor all his life. Young men of leisure vied to display their wardrobes. The café society and Bright Young Things of the late 1800s and early 1900s were populated with dudes. In the popular press of the 1880s and 1890s, "dude" was a new word for " dandy"-an "extremely well-dressed male", a man who assigned particular importance to his appearance. ![]() The term "dude" may have derived from the 18th-century word "doodle", as in "Yankee Doodle Dandy". He is pictured (1888) in the New York American newspaper at the time of the "battle of the Dudes". History Evander Berry Wall, a New York socialite, was dubbed "King of the Dudes". Current slang retains at least some use of all three of these common meanings. In the 1960s, dude evolved to mean any male person, a meaning that slipped into mainstream American slang in the 1970s. From the 1870s to the 1960s, dude primarily meant a male person who dressed in an extremely fashionable manner (a dandy) or a conspicuous citified person who was visiting a rural location, a "city slicker". Dude is American slang for an individual, typically male. ![]()
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