DUDE (YOUTH CULTURE)

In urban street slang (originally in the US): a person, a guy, one of the 'gang'. Often used as a form of address: friend, buddy. Etymology: Dude is a slang word of unknown origin that was first used in the US in the 1880s to mean 'a dandy, a swell' or (as a Western cowboys' word) 'a city-dweller'. By the early 1970s it had been taken up in US Black English to mean 'a man, a cool guy or cat' (and later 'any person'), losing its original negative connotations. History and Usage: This more general use of dude was popularized outside Black street slang through the blaxploitation films of the late seventies and, more particularly, through the explosion of hip hop during the eighties. Its spread into British English idiom, at least among children, was finally ensured by repeated use among the Teenage Mutant Turtles and other US cartoon characters in comic strips, cartoons, and games. Dudes like that, they're totally dialled in. They can earn a quarter of a million a year, serious coin. Richard Rayner Los Angeles Without a Map (1988), p. 68 It is the teenage Bart who has caught the public's imagination. With his skateboard and, touchingly, his catapult, he is a match for anyone, not least because of his streetwise vocabulary. 'Yo, dude!' he says; 'Aye caramba!' and--most famously--'Eat my shorts!' Independent 29 July 1990, p. 17