Our sardonic slang series continues with dude, one of the quintessential words of the genre. A plethora of kudos goes to Monica Heiser for suggesting it.

As Henry Louis Mencken put it, “Slang originates in an effort, always by ingenious individuals, to make the language more vivid and expressive.” Mencken (1880-1956), or the “Sage of Baltimore,” was a controversial American journalist, satirist and all-around literary icon of the first half of the 20th century, known for his definitive work on North American slang, The American Language.

He wasn’t above making new words himself. For example, he coined the word ecdysiast to describe someone who takes his or her clothes off for, ah, various reasons, deriving its etymology from the Greek ecdysis, “a stripping off,” used to describe the molting process of snakes and insects.

If you made a habit of streaking across sports fields while in college, you could put down “ecdysiast” on your résumé. I must thank professor George Behlmer for bringing this to our attention.

Mencken went on to say, “Much of the discussion of slang by popular etymologists is devoted to proofs that this or that locution is not really slang at all — that it is to be found in Shakespeare, in Milton, or in the Authorized Version.”

Thankfully, this particular popular etymologist is dealing with an example of “true slang:” the exact origins of dude are unknown. That being said, you might be surprised as to its original meaning.

While nowadays it’s a positive interjection that expresses approval (for example, “Dude! I like your word!”), at the end of the 19th century “dude” was the name applied to a man who dressed, talked or acted too well, or in a very fastidious manner. You would call such a fellow a “dandy.” Today we would call such an individual a snobby “metro man.”

Like the flu, the word was first spread by cowboys. Yes, that’s right. Starting in the 1870s, they used it to describe “fancy-dressed city folk who went out west on vacation,” according to the American Heritage Dictionary.

“Dude” thus defined made its first recorded written appearance in (American) English in about 1883 in New York City. As noted in the North Adams Transcript in June of that year, “The new coined word ‘dude’ … has travelled over the country with a great deal of rapidity since but two months ago it grew into general use in New York.”

A “dude ranch” catered to the fickle needs of tenderfoot city-slickers (and still does). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, as recorded in the July 4, 1883 issue of the Prince Albert Times (in Saskatchewan), “The dude is one of those creatures which are perfectly harmless and are a necessary evil to civilization.”

A dudess or dudine is, incidentally, a female dude.

The modern definition of dude comes to us largely from African-American English, and refers to someone who attracts the attention of others in a good way, and so is often used to identify a friend. Hyman Elias Goldin, in his Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo (published in 1950), used this line as an example: “I got a chill on [doubt the courage of] this dude we’re working with.”

So the next time you call your buddy “dude,” think about where the word came from — foppish, wannabe cowboys — and smile. Please feel free to also submit your word suggestions, and until next time, cheerio!

[Reach columnist Will Mari at features@thedaily.washington.edu.]