The Surprising Insult Behind The Word Dude
As a multi-purpose word, suitable for all sorts of occasions and expressing any number of human emotions, saying "dude" definitely abides — to paraphrase The Dude himself from the cult classic film "The Big Lebowski" (per IMDb). But, have you ever stopped to consider just where the word dude actually comes from? The real meaning of the word has changed drastically over time. Surprisingly enough, its origins may have been an insult, according to recent research (via The Week).
These days, dude has come to mean a sort of chilled out or laid back personality, or instead, an exclamation of dismay, such as "Dude!?" when someone tells you what a terrible day they've just had. Still other times, we might say "dude" in celebration, as in, "Dude, that's such great news!" or simply as a stand-in for "you're the best," "you're the man," or "you got this, bro." Dude has even become somewhat gender-neutral, in the opinion of some, as Hornet points out. But, dude was most certainly associated with men when it first came into common parlance.
The rise of the word dude
As is often the case, it's hard to pinpoint exactly when certain words come into being, or how or when their true definition might shift. But, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, most modern connotations of the word dude came about in the African-American communities of the 1960s. From there, the word was co-opted by countercultural, and mostly white, youth movements in the `60s and `70s, as Babbel points out. That was particularly true along the Pacific coast of the United States, contributing to dude's slacker and surfer culture overtones. However, the word was still most often associated with men.
These days, the word dude is seemingly everywhere, and it's said all over the world, particularly in casual conversation and as a part of youth culture (via The Intertia). It's also shown up in a number of movie titles, and even part of the phrase "dude ranch." Interestingly, it's the dude ranch that gets us closer to what might be the true origin of the word dude, and in those early days, it most likely wasn't a compliment.
Yankee Doodle Dandy
Scholarship now suggests that the word dude comes from another well-known idiom in the American lexicon: Yankee Doodle Dandy, as Babbel notes. At the time of the American Revolution, calling someone a Yankee Doodle Dandy was somewhat akin to calling someone a hipster, circa 2005. A Yankee Doodle Dandy was most often a fashion-forward young man, usually of English descent, who'd traveled the European continent and considered himself well-versed in modernity. To some, however, he seemed like a poser.
Take apart the phrase Yankee Doodle Dandy and we find that it is formed from three separate languages each pertaining to one word in the phrase. "Yankee" is a word early Dutch colonists used for their English counterparts. The Germans, chime in with "doodle" which may be a derivation of the word Dödel, meaning fool. While "dandy" meant much the same as it does today: a fancily-dressed person, often obnoxiously so (via Babbel). Over time, "doodle" was shortened to "dood" and then "dude" but the meaning remained much the same: you were highfalutin city folk. This also explains the origins of "dude ranch," or any ranch that's mostly a resort attracting city slickers who seek an authentic cowboy experience rather than any kind of real agricultural operation, as Smarter Travel writes.