[Ads-l] dude = 'person of any gender'

[Laurence Horn]

It might be worth revisiting Scott Kiesling's paper "Dude" in the 2004
volume of American Speech (https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-79-3-281), in
which he breaks down usage by sex of speaker as well as sex of
addressee/referent and discusses the distinction between vocative and
referential uses to see how usage may have changed over the last couple of
decades.

LH

On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 10:56 PM Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at gmail.com>
wrote:

> In season one, second episode, about 20 minutes in, there is a vocative or
> interjection usage of “dude” used to a goat. The goat has gotten its head
> caught in a fence. An argument could be made for this being
> anthropomorphizing but I think the applicability of “dude” can cover
> non-humans without the need for that argument.
>
> I know this term has been discussed, but non-mail coverage is sparse win
> dictionaries. The OED (3a) says “dude” means a person and usually a man,
> and has two example sentences of vocatives.
>
> Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dude <
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dude>) has the vocative but
> claims it means only “fellow, guy”.
>
> Cambridge University Press (
> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dude <
> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dude>), Lexico (
> https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/dude <
> https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/dude>), and Vocabulary.com (
> https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/dude <
> https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/dude>) say it only means “man”.
>
> Dictionary.com (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dude <
> https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dude>) has an interjection meaning.
>
> I’m not going to through the UD; there are 242 pages of entries (
> https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dude <
> https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dude>) and am reasonably
> sure at least 50 definitions get it right.
>
> Benjamin Barrett (he/his/him)
> Formerly of Seattle, WA
>
> > On 27 Jan 2021, at 09:57, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> wrote:
> >
> > Not new, but worth noting:
> >
> > Gina McCarthy, White House Climate Adviser (age 66), on CNN just now:
> >
> > "I'm the dude who's supposed to deliver this in a timely way."
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org