dude

Origin: , though likely a , perhaps with reference to the fashionable “Yankee Doodle dandy” in the 18th-century lyrics of the song “Yankee Doodle”; the word is first attested in 1883 as a New York City slang term of contempt for a “fastidious man, fop”. If so, then related to , fool, dunce, . It has also been suggested that the word is derived from dudes (“old rags”; compare duds) and scarecrow, or possibly related to dawdle; It has also been suggested the word derives from the . The common claim that the term derives from (or is) a word for a camel's foreskin (or some other vulgar thing, like a ha. Origin information sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0).