dude [L19th] This slang term is probably a shortening of *doodle. It appeared in New York in the 1870s for a man who was the equivalent of the English *dandy, fastidious in his dress. It was also applied to a non-westerner or city dweller spending his holidays on a ranch in the western USA, a ‘dude ranch’. In the 1890s it came to mean simply ‘a person’, especially but not exclusively a man. See also cat.