This “Dude” Was a Dud

I’ve been looking into the origin of the word “dude,” which originally meant a dandy or a fop. It exploded into public consciousness in early 1883, though researchers have found two uses in the late 1870s.

Mary Mapes Dodge, editor of St. Nicholas Magazine, muddied the waters a little in 1890 when she wrote in an article about curious words:

The word dude began to mingle in the speech of the people of this country about the year 1873, but did not make its appearance in print until 1876, when it boldly met the public gaze in the February number of “Putnam’s Magazine.” The origin of the word has been a question ever since it asserted itself in every-day speech, and its claim to represent a human nonentity in raiment befitting either fool or fashion-plate has never yet received the stamp of authority.

In fact, Putnam’s Magazine wasn’t being published in 1876. The issue at issue was dated February 1870. Furthermore, that magazine didn’t include the word “dude”; it included the word “dud,” with the direct opposite meaning.

That issue of Putnam’s included part of a novel titled Eirene: or, A Woman’s Right, by Mary Clemmer. In it someone asks a young man what he thinks of a young lady, and he replies:

“Think! I think she is dressed like a dud. Can’t say how she would look in the costume of the present century.”

Maximilian Schele De Vere quoted that passage (without exacting accuracy) in his Americanisms: The English of the New World (1871) under the entry “Dud.” Context shows it was a form of the old word “dowd,” as in “dowdy.” It meant a woman unfashionably dressed and not a man too fashionably dressed.

After “dude” burst on the scene in 1883, however, etymologists went looking for its origin. Some found De Vere’s entry and cited it in an argument that “dude” had grown out of “dud.” For discussion of a more convincing theory, see this posting at Boston 1775.

Looking in on St. Nicholas

If I were in Manhattan Friday afternoon, instead of getting ready for MICE, I’d try to attend this lecture at the New York Public Library: “St. Nicholas Magazine: a Portable Art Museum”:

In November 1873, American publisher Scribner and Company published the first issue of a new illustrated monthly magazine for children, St. Nicholas Magazine: Scribner’s Illustrated Magazine for Girls and Boys. Contributing to its success was the editorial vision of its first and most influential editor, Mary Mapes Dodge, who was to create a new kind of magazine for children, one in which illustration and art education were important foci.

The greatest expression of St. Nicholas’ art education program is seen in its many reproductions of fine art and architecture from Antiquity, the Old Masters, and contemporary academic artists. These reproductions accompanied art historical information, illustrated fictional stories, or stood alone for the reader to contemplate.

St. Nicholas also contained the work of trade illustrators who would become famous through the distribution of illustrated magazines, including Howard Pyle, Jessie McDermott and Reginald Birch. Contained between the two heavy, matte paper covers were innovative and artistic layouts, typography, and decorative designs that consciously paralleled the styles of the predominate artistic movements, such as those associated with the American Renaissance and English Aestheticism, that were popular among elite, genteel Victorian Americas.

The speaker is Mary F. Zawadzi, an art historian and writer in residence in the Library’s Wertheim Study.

The picture above, courtesy of The Oz Enthusiast, is a poster advertising the publication of L. Frank Baum’s fantasy originally called “The Magic Cloak,” a titled that gradually changed into Queen Zixi of Ix. It probably underwent more rigorous editing at St. Nicholas than any other Baum fantasy; he usually worked with small publishers where he was a big fish and got a fair amount of deference. As a result, it’s one of his best.