If the Springfield Republican
is to be credited the word “dude” (pronounced in two syllables) is not a new
one and is not of English origin. It has
been used in the little town of Salem, N. H., for twenty years past and it is
claimed was coined there. It is common
there to speak of a dapper young man as a “dude of a fellow,” of a small animal
as a “little dude,” of a sweetheart as “my dude,” and of an aesthetic youth of
the Wilde type as a dude. But how the
word attained so sudden and widespread a notoriety puzzles Salem. Its revival at New York is credited to a
disgusted Englishman, who remarked, after visiting a rich club, that the young
men were all “dudes.”
National Republican, April 14, 1883, page 4, column 7.
The
recently famous word “dude” has been in common use in the little town of Salem,
N. H., for the last twenty years. The
people there apply the word to those bucolic swains who aspire to be the
village fops. All such conceited and
brainless young men are spoken of as “dudes,” the word being pronounced in two
syllables. How the word became
transported to the metropolis, and why it attained such a sudden popularity,
are questions that a philologist alone perhaps can fully solve.
New York Tribune,
April 16, 1883, page 4.
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