Posts

Showing posts with the label dude

Dude! Where does the word dude come from?

Image
with thanks to Taking English One Thumb at a Time ( dūd, dyūd )  n. Informal . An Easterner or city person who vacations on a ranch in the West. Informal . A man who is very fancy or sharp in dress and demeanor. Slang . A man; a fellow. dudes  Persons of either sex. tr.v. ,  dud·ed ,  dud·ing ,  dudes . Slang . To dress elaborately or flamboyantly:  got all duded up for the show. interj.   Slang Used to express approval, satisfaction, or congratulations. Source The  origins of the word dude are disputed but certainly predate  Dude, Where’s my Car? (2000). According to the American Heritage Dictionary:  Originally it was applied to fancy-dressed city folk who went out west on vacation. In this usage it first appears in the 1870s. A New York newspaper declared one Evan Berry (left) the ‘King of the Dudes’ in 1888. 'Dude' makes an appearance  in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889). The word also pops-up in the letters of an

What is Dudeism?

Image
Look, let me explain something to you. I'm not Mr. Lebowski.  You're  Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude . So that's what you call me. That, or His Dudeness … Duder … or El Duderino, if, you know, you're not into the whole brevity thing.   On the face of it, the eponymous hero of  The Great Lebowksi  (1998) is an unlikely religious leader. According to the Cohen brothers film's tagline, the Dude is 'a lazy, time-wasting slacker'.  And by his own admission, Dude struggles to stay on top of life's vicissitudes. You know, a lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-you's. And, uh, lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder's head. Luckily I'm adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug regimen to keep my mind limber. At the centre of these 'what-have-you's' is the theft of a rug which - as every Dude admirer knows - 'really tied the room together'. And The Dude's quest to track it down forms the cen