"Dude" nickname (1876)

Michael Quinion wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
Fri Sep 19 16:44:15 UTC 2008


Ben Zimmer wrote:

> When Michael Quinion covered "dude" for World Wide Words, he wrote:
>
> http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dud2.htm
> Earlier cases of dude are on record - the Historical Dictionary of
> American Slang takes it back to 1877 and there are examples of it as a
> personal name or nickname even before then. ---
>
> Do we have other pre-1877 examples of "Dude" as a nickname?

Not having kept records of this for some strange reason, I can't now say
for sure, but my erratic memory tells me that I found a couple from a year
or so earlier, one of which is probably yours.


--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: wordseditor at worldwidewords.org
Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org

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