Dude

How to spell dude

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce dude

What does dude mean?

1. nounAn informal word for a man, or a casual way of addressing someone.
2. nounA man overly concerned with fashionable clothes and refined manners; a dandy.

Dude in a sentence

• Some dude in a parked van was blocking the driveway all morning.

• The old novel describes a city dude in a silk waistcoat and polished boots.

• The dude at the rental desk upgraded our car without charging extra.

• In the 1880s a well-dressed young dude would parade down the avenue to be seen.

Where does dude come from?

Language of origin: Other

Dude burst into American English around 1883 as slang for a man who was excessively concerned with stylish clothes and refined manners, in other words a dandy or fop. Its exact origin is genuinely uncertain, but the most popular explanation links it to the old song 'Yankee Doodle', whose 'doodle' mocked a foppish fellow, and from which the clipped 'dude' may have grown. Within a few years it spread west, where ranch owners coined 'dude ranch' for a holiday property catering to soft city visitors who knew nothing of cattle work. Over the twentieth century the mocking edge wore away, and by the 1960s and 1970s American surf and youth culture had reshaped it into a relaxed, friendly word for any man, then into a casual term of address. The simple spelling matches its informal, spoken character, with the long 'u' written as the plain 'u' plus a silent final 'e'.

How the word is built

• dude (a single root word; no prefix or suffix, possibly clipped from doodle)