dude

dude  (dd, dyd)

n.

1. Informal An Easterner or city person who vacations on a ranch in the West.

2. Informal A man who is very fancy or sharp in dress and demeanor.

3. Slang

a. A man; a fellow.

b. 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.

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[Origin unknown.]

Our Living Language Cowboys and the Wild West are indelibly set in the minds of many as typical of Americaan association borne out by several common Modern English words that originated in the speech of the 19th-century western United States. One is dude, now perhaps most familiar as a slang term with a wide range of uses (including use as an all-purpose interjection for expressing approval: "Dude!"). Originally it was applied to fancy-dressed city folk who went out west on vacation. In this usage it first appears in the 1870s. The origin of the word is not known, but a number of other cowboy terms were borrowed by early settlers from American Spanish. These include buckaroo, corral, lasso, mustang, ranch, rodeo, and stampede. Buckaroo, interestingly, is an example of a word borrowed twice: it is an Americanized form of Spanish vaquero, which also made it into English as vaquero, a cowboy.

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dude

Noun

Informal

1. US & Canad a man: he was a black dude in his late twenties

2. Chiefly US & Canad old-fashioned a dandy

3. Western US & Canad a city dweller who spends his or her holiday on a ranch [origin unknown]

Thesaurus

Noun	1.	dude - an informal form of address for a man; "Say, fellow, what are you doing?"; "Hey buster, what's up?" buster, fellow adult male, man - an adult person who is male (as opposed to a woman); "there were two women and six men on the bus"
	2.	dude - a man who is much concerned with his dress and appearance dandy, fashion plate, fop, gallant, sheik, beau, clotheshorse, swell coxcomb, cockscomb - a conceited dandy who is overly impressed by his own accomplishments macaroni - a British dandy in the 18th century who affected Continental mannerisms; "Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni" adult male, man - an adult person who is male (as opposed to a woman); "there were two women and six men on the bus"