The Meanings and Suggested Etymologies of 'Dude'

Abstract

E VEN recent dictionaries have been unable to give the origin of dude; and for that matter the definitions of the word in the new American College Dictionary (1948) and in other late dictionaries are not entirely satisfactory. The first definition in the ACD suggests that a dude is an 'affected or fastidious man' and, in the West, 'a person who vacations on a ranch.' These definitions do not seem to me to get at the root meaning of the word. My students tell me, and I must agree, that what distinguishes the dude from the rest of humanity is his dress. Although all tourists are sometimes called dudes-in Yellowstone Park, for instance, by the summer help-generally a dude is a particular kind of tourist. In the West he is one who comes from a city, not necessarily from the East, and who attempts to dress like the natives. An overdressed Californian is surely as much a dude in Wyoming as a Bostonian. When the stranger's clothing becomes sufficiently soiled and he has learned the habits of the area, he ceases to be a dude. Nor do my students believe that a dude must be a man, for a city woman as well as her husband can be a dude. The word is not, however, as commonly applied to women as it is to men, perhaps because it is sometimes slightly derogatory. My students also inform me that though they use the word almost exclusively as it refers to tourists on ranches, their elders use the term more broadly to mean any kind of fop, any person who overdresses, whatever his origin and present geographic location. But, they say, this meaning is falling out of use. Perhaps so, perhaps not. Berrey and Van den Bark in their American Thesaurus of Slang (2d ed., 1947) list dude as an army synonym for recruita meaning which seems surely to have grown out of the soldier's simultaneous contempt and respect for the newcomer's civilian finery. They also list the word as a synonym for excellent or super just as they list zootie. Their findings seem clearly to indicate that what the zootie character and the dude have in common is an overfastidious regard for clothing. From its very first appearance in English, the word has had reference to apparel. The OED in its third volume, completed in 1897, says that dude is 'a name given in ridicule to a man affecting an exaggerated fastidiousness in dress, speech and deportment, and very particular about what is aesthetically good form; hence, extended to an exquisite, a dandy, a swell.' The DAE Volume II (940) gives as its first definition of dude, 'A man whose