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John, Here's what the word-detective has to say:
For a lightweight word denoting attention to fashion and a devotion to "cool," "dude" has proven remarkably durable. It first showed up in the late 19th century, most probably as a variation on "dud," a Victorian slang term meaning "article of clothing" (still heard today as "duds"). The original dudes were fops and dandies, well-to-do young men who were known for their fancy style of dressing as well as their often dissolute "lifestyles."
A few years later, "dude" made its debut in the Western United States as a disparaging term for any city-dwelling visitor (also known as a "city slicker") to cowboy country. The taming of the West brought a flood of tourists from the East, and "dude ranches" quickly sprang up to give the visitors a taste of "cowpoke life."
In the 1930's, "dude" mutated a bit and came to be used as a general synonym for "guy" or "fellow," without its former connotations of dandyism, and seemed to be slowly fading away. The early 1960's surfer culture of Southern California, however, gave "dude" a shot in the arm, transforming the word into one of its basic units of linguistic exchange. There were no "guys" or "fellows" hanging ten -- only "dudes."
After cruising through the 1960's and 70's as a low-level slang term, "dude" hit the big time again in the 1980's courtesy of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and is still going strong today. ------------------------------------------------
My son practically lived TMNT, which I now realize is probably why I use the term as much as I do!
Here is how to find the word-detective:
http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/PF/etymology.html
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http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/PF/etymology.html
Cowabunga, dude! Thanks for the great link. I've noticed that links posted here never seem to be clickable, is there a reason for this?
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max, in order to make a link hot, you have to use markup, just like you do with colors, using "url" and "/url" instead of "red" and "/red". so sometimes we get lazy and just paste in the address. http://members.aol.com/tsuwm/
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enthusiast
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tsuwm, my friend,
where are your CAPITALS???
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william, tsuwm's capitals must be hibernating with yours.
tsuwm, in my case it wasn't laziness (I don't mind using colors), but ignorance. D'you mean to tell me that somehow my computer knows a link is a link, just because I put it in color? This confuses me, 'cause sometimes when I type links in e-mail, they magically come out in color, blue. Will any color work here?
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jackie, whoa there, dudette! time to refer to the "markup in your posts" writeup: <b> text </b> = Makes the given text bold. <email> joe@blow.com </email> = Makes the given email address clickable. <i> text </i> = Makes the given text italic. <pre> text </pre> = Surrounds the given text with pre tags. <quote> text </quote> = Surrounds the given text with blockquote and hr's. This markup tag is used for quoting a reply. <url> link </url> = Makes the given url into a link. in all of the above, change <> to square brackets -- that's what I meant by this works just like using colors!
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>where are your CAPITALS???
william,
I guess I'm like you in that I only use them to make a POINT or to add emPHAsis -- now if i could only break myself of the habit of uppercasing that pesky personal pronoun....
-tsuwm
p.s. - I blame it all on being exposed to e.e. cummings at an impressionable age.
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in all of the above, change <> to square brackets -- that's what I meant by this works just like using colors!
Thank you, my dear! Once again, I have leapt before doing my homework, in my usual lazy fashion.
I like how you put your emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble!
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I like how you put your emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble!
When I was about eighteen, some friends and I started speaking to each other that way. It was quite fun, but surprisingly difficult to maintain over an extended conversation.
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Thank you, tsuwm. I had read the markup instructions, and suspected that the reason may have been as you suggest, at least for some, but I did nor wish to malign anyone by saying so. I hope you enjoyed your Labour Day. That apparent non-sequitur is an attempted segue into: "how long after mailing a request will one start receiving your wwftd?"
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