dude
Forms
- Plural
- dudes
- present (v1)
- dude
- past (v2)
- duded
- past participle (v3)
- duded
- present participle
- dudeing
- 3rd person singular
- dudes
Definitions
1.A man, generally a younger man.(colloquial)
- So we were at the mall and these two dudes just walk up to us and say "hi".
2.A term of address for someone, often but not exclusively a man, particularly when hailing, cautioning them or offering advice.(colloquial)
- Watch it, dude; you almost knocked me over.
- Dude, I'd be careful around the principal; he's having a bad day.
- Hey, dude, how's it going?
3.A tourist.(slang)
4.A birder who has expensive clothing and equipment, but scant knowledge of birds, their fieldmarks, habits, etc.
1.A term of address, usually for a man, conveying awe, excitement, surprise, annoyance, etc.(slang)
- And, feckin' A, you ain't never gonna guess this one, dude! […] Thinking this is a little worse than me watching porn. Dude.
1.Usually followed by up: to dress up, to wear smart or special clothes.
- Buford Tannen: Especially not some duded-up egg-sucking piece of gutter trash!
- It seemed that the fellas couldn't get enough girlin' and racing fast cars and grooving to rock and dudeing around in city-slick suits from St. Louis.
2.To address someone as dude.
- The other two guys with him burst into laughter, dude'''ing and high-fiving like mad.
3.To take a vacation in a dude ranch.
- I am certainly interested in this "dude community" business just because I have tried it in the slightest kind of way. In camping it's "the fewer the better," but in "dudeing" it may be "the more the merrier."
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #2274
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Uncommon
- General reading & writing
- Rare
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Related words
Synonyms
Etymology
Uncertain, though likely a clipping of doodle (“fool, simpleton, mindless person”), 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 German Low German Dudeldop, Dudendop (“fool, dunce”), Saterland Frisian Duddigegen (“idiot”).