Dude #2 - Cover Art for The True History and Origin of "The Dude"

Dude Descending a Staircase

Henry Alexander Ogden, cover art for Robert Sale-Hill's, The History & Origin of the "Dude," New York, Rogers & Sherwood [(1883?)].

Click here to read the original poem, in its entirety:

Dude #31 - A Yankee Dude'll do

The Sun (New York), September 22, 1883.

But the joke was already old by then:

Charley quite outwitted: She leaned her head upon his shoulder and said, in her most insinuating tones: “Charley, dear, I’ve heard so much about dudes I want you to get me one.” 

Charley smiled at her innocence, but resolved to humor it.  “Would you prefer a French dude?” he asked.

“I think not,” she answered, squirming coyly.  “How would a German dude suit?”

I don’t think it would suit at all.  I don’t understand German.”

“Well, what shall it e, then?”

It was her turn to smile as she said, with an arch look:

“A Yankee dude’ll do.”

- Brooklyn Eagle.

The Evening Star (Washington DC), July 28, 1883, page 7.

Puck, Volume 13, page 202.

Dude #30 - Dude declines brain food

At breakfast the other morning a New York dude declined a piece of shad.  He had been told that fish food made brain, and he did not want to unfit himself for the position he held in society.

St. Tammany Farmer (Covington, Louisiana), May 5, 1883, page 3.

Dude #29 - from Salem New Hampshire?

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.

 

Dude #28 - Lunatican Origin?

Is dude a word of two syllables, and is the word, like its subject, of Lunatican origin?

Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee), April 21, 1883, page 1.