How the Word ‘Dude’ Originated With the British Insult ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’

Dr. Erica Brozovsky, PhD of the PBS series Otherwords explained the etymological origins of the word “dude”. Despite its popularity in the modern lexicon, the word actually comes from the British insult “Yankee Doodle Dandy” from the 18th century, which was then abbreviated a hundred years later.

Dude has been around since the 1880s. Researchers think that it’s a shortening of Yankee Doodle Dandy, an insulting term the British used for Americans trying to be fancy and refined. Americans reclaimed it, but that’s six syllables, so it got shortened to dood, D-O-O-D, and later, the D-U-D-E spelling we’re used to.