Ep. 39 Dude & Bro

This week I look at the words dude and bro. Come along for the ride this week as I ask, dude and bro, how did that happen? Before there was ‘bro’, there was ‘dude It’s thought that ‘dude’ is an abbreviation of ‘Doodle’ in ‘Yankee Doodle’, In the popular press of the 1880s and 1890s, "dude" was a new word for "dandy"—an "extremely well-dressed male", a man who paid particular importance to his appearance.  High Society of the late 1800s and early 1900s were populated with dudes.  Young men of leisure vied to show off their wardrobes. The best known of this type is probably Evander Berry Wall, Wall was first proclaimed "King of the Dudes"  Sound bite at the resort town of Long Branch, New Jersey in the summer of 1883. Wall was again proclaimed "King of the Dudes" in 1888 by the New York American newspaper.  A journalist named Blakely Hall judged that Wall had won the "Battle of the Dudes" against Robert "Bob" Hilliard, another sartorial dude when, during the March Blizzard of 1888, he strode into a bar clad in gleaming boots of patent leather that went to his hips. The Dude Wall won another fashion contest in August 1888, in Saratoga Springs, New York. To win a bet against John "Bet a Million" Gates, Wall changed clothes 40 times between breakfast and dinner. He appeared on the race track "in one flashy ensemble after the other until, exhausted but victorious he at last entered the ballroom of the United States Hotel in faultless evening attire. Ever the fashion-leader, Wall is credited for having been the first person in the United States to wear a dinner jacket (tuxedo) to a ball. The white ensemble had been sent to him by the London Savile Row tailor Henry Poole & Co "to be worn for a quiet dinner at home or at an evening's entertainment at a summer resort."  This was a time when tailcoat was still the rule, and Wall was immediately ordered off the floor. Wall's financial life was not as successful as his fashion life.  The word was used to refer to American Easterners, specifically referring to a man with "store-bought clothes". The word was used by cowboys to unfavorably refer to the city dwellers. Thus "dude" was used to describe the wealthy men of the expansion of the United States during the 19th century by ranch-and-homestead-bound settlers of the American Old West. This use is reflected in the dude ranch, a guest ranch catering to urbanites seeking more rural experiences.  One of the first known references to the word in American film was in the 1969 movie Easy Rider where Wyatt (portrayed by Peter Fonda) explains to his cellmate lawyer (portrayed by Jack Nicholson) the definition of "dude": "Dude means nice guy; Dude means regular sort of person." Etymology of the word Bro (noun) Old English broþor, from Proto-Germanic *brothar (source also of Old Norse broðir, Danish broder, Old Frisian brother, Dutch broeder, Old High German bruodar, German Bruder, Gothic bróþar), from PIE root The term brother comes from the Proto-Indo-European *bʰréh₂tēr, which becomes Latin frater, of the same meaning. For centuries, it was merely a graphic abbreviation of brother (properly bro.), occasionally put to colloquial use, like sis, to refer to a person’s male sibling. An excerpt from the Oxford dictionary Bro’s meaning had begun to expand by the mid-20th century. It came to refer simply to a man (a synonym of ‘fellow’ or ‘guy’), or sometimes more specifically a black man. The rock critic Lester Bangs wrote in 1976, "if we the (presumably) white jass-buffs couldn’t get with it maybe it was only meant for the bros." Oxford explains that "by being the sort of person who says 'bro,' a person becomes a bro. By the 1970s, though, bro began to break new ground, untethered from brother.  It came to mean not merely a guy, but a male friend. For instance, in the film script for the 1992 comedy Encino Man,