dude
/d(j)uːd
/informal, chiefly North American
noun
1A man; a guy (often as a form of address): hey dude, what’s up? if some dude smacked me, I’d smack him back...
- Hey dude, hold on, Pontius has something to say about April Fool's.
- Hey dude, thought you said you wanted to talk about the future?
- Hey dude, why'd you take your mouth off the exhaust pipe?
1.1A stylish and confident person: cool dudes...
- The Clutch dudes are totally cool and we're having a blast.
- Then, I turned to the cool dudes on the right to see how they were reacting, and nearly fell off my berth - it was them.
- Everybody knows the coolest dudes in the world have no money.
1.2 dated A dandy.
verb [no object] (dude up)
Dress up elaborately: my brother was all duded up in silver and burgundy...
- He's 55 years old, the hair largely gray now, all duded up like a college professor, and he's backed by a huge American flag in this union hall in Ashland, Ohio.
- Either way, it's an excuse to get all duded up, and hang out with a bunch of folks I know.
- In one photograph he stands in his lambing camp, duded up in a white shirt, black vest, and tie.
Derivatives
dudish
/ adjective ...- His need to hunt and gather has led him to amass more typically dudish things like Star Wars figures, useless and broken garage-sale finds, and, most recently, sounds of all kinds.
Origin
Late 19th century (denoting a dandy): probably from German dialect Dude 'fool'.
This slang term is probably from German dialect Dude ‘fool’. It appeared in New York at the beginning of 1883 for a man who was the equivalent of the English dandy, fastidious in his dress. At the same time the word was applied to a non-westerner or city-dweller spending his holidays on a ranch in the western USA, a ‘dude ranch’. In the 20th century it came to mean simply ‘a man, a guy’. See also cat