dude!

[Wilson Gray]

"I have seen middle-aged men using 'dude' with each other," she said.

Not to mention at least one senior citizen who's been using it since
1962, when he first heard it used in Los Angeles by a dude
newly-arrived from Chicago.

HDAS has "dude" as (once having been) in military use since at least
1936. In my day, late '50's to early '60's, the term for a clumsy or
awkward trainee or group of trainees was "dud(s)," which the field
first shirt defined as "a piece of ordnance that fails to explode."
This is probably not a derivative of "dude," IMO. "Dude" and "dud" look
a lot alike in print, but they sound so different that they're probably
not related and the first shirt's etymology is probably correct. Unless
he was merely crying "Wolof," of course.

-Wilson Gray

On Dec 8, 2004, at 11:59 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky wrote

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
> Subject:      Fwd: dude!
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> American Speech in the media...
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: Lauren Asia Hall-Lew <dialect at Stanford.EDU>
>> Date: December 8, 2004 8:16:59 AM PST
>> To: socio at csli.stanford.edu
>> Subject: dude!
>>
>> Scott Kiesling and Mary Bucholtz on CNN:
>>
>> http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/12/08/dude.study.ap/index.html
>>
>