who bore a standard festooned with a dragon .
DUDE
A city slicker who vacations on a Western ranch; a flamboyant dresser; an informal greeting, as in “Hey, dude.” For centuries a dude was a dandy, a swell, a fastidious aesthete, according to Thorndike-Barnhart . For such a hip expression, its origins and definition have tended to be so hopelessly opaque in traditional dictionaries that some have simply surrendered, as the OED does in its attribution of O.O.O., “of obscure origin.” By far the most compelling definition comes from Daniel Cassidy, who devotes an entire chapter in How the Irish Invented Slang to the Irish root dúd , a foolish looking fellow, a dolt, a numbskull, an eavesdropper, and later, Irish-American street slang for young swells on a spree in the bohemian circles of the concert halls, saloons, and theaters in late-19th-century New York. He cites a clipping from the Brooklyn Eagle in 1883: “A new word has been coined, d-u-d-e. … Nobody knows where it came from, but it sprung into popularity in the last two weeks and now ever ybody’s using it.” Thus, what began as a dud in Ireland, a dolt, a clown, a rubbernecker, came to America with the immigrants, evolving into the Irish-American dude . How cool is that—117 years ago everybody was saying “ dude .” By the 1950s, dudes are “suave cats” hitting the bongos, which evokes an episode of Dobie Gillis on the old Philco. But as Bill Cosby says, I told you those stories to tell you this one. In 2004, I came home one night to several messages from a guy who claimed to be “the Dude.” I felt a Cheshire Cat grin crawl across my face when I looked up
his website. His real name was Jeff Dowd, the inspiration for “the Dude” in the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski . As played by Jeff Bridges, “the Dude” is the love child of a hundred years of dude lore, a hippie slacker trapped in a Chandleresque detective story. The plot is baroque, the banter raunchy, and the humor as subtle as a machine gun. What holds it together is a word —abide , as in “the Dude abides.” To abide is to endure, outlast, continue, hold out, wait, prepare for; from a , to, and bide , dwell. Thus, a dude lives according to his or her own dudeness , which is a philosophy, a credo, a way to conduct yourself, a way to keep it together, stay cool, outlast everyone else who gives in, a way to stand by your friends, man, while the whole world changes around you.
DUENDE (SPANISH)
The blood surge, the vital force, the source of all impassioned art. When passion pales as an expression, duende is a fierce alternative to sentimental notions of inspiration. The Gypsies gave us this word for “little folk,” or “the blood of the earth,” from the Spanish duen de casa , master of the house. Duende eludes ordinary definitions, such as the pallid “power to attract via personal charm,” according to one usually reliable dictionary. Instead, duende is a lapidary word, with more levels than Troy. Traditionally, duende was simply a “playful hobgoblin,” a prankster spirit. To comprehend it, you need to turn to a poet like Federico García Lorca,
who knew of an older, deeper aspect of the word in his native Andalusia: a power that could be found in the “deep songs” of certain poets, on the dance floors of flamenco dancers, the cries from truly gifted guitar players, and the flourishes of toreros; from artists who possessed—or were possessed by— duende . More than virtuosity, different from inspiration, duende , Lorca believed, couldn’t be developed; it needed to be wrestled to the ground, subdued, then absorbed. For Lorca, art, poetry, music, playwriting were a quest for the truth of life, not entertainment; it was irrational, earthbound, and profoundly aware of death, down in the “bitter root.” “The duende ,” he wrote in Deep Song , “is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a
DUDE
A city slicker who vacations on a Western ranch; a flamboyant dresser; an informal greeting, as in “Hey, dude.” For centuries a dude was a dandy, a swell, a fastidious aesthete, according to Thorndike-Barnhart . For such a hip expression, its origins and definition have tended to be so hopelessly opaque in traditional dictionaries that some have simply surrendered, as the OED does in its attribution of O.O.O., “of obscure origin.” By far the most compelling definition comes from Daniel Cassidy, who devotes an entire chapter in How the Irish Invented Slang to the Irish root dúd , a foolish looking fellow, a dolt, a numbskull, an eavesdropper, and later, Irish-American street slang for young swells on a spree in the bohemian circles of the concert halls, saloons, and theaters in late-19th-century New York. He cites a clipping from the Brooklyn Eagle in 1883: “A new word has been coined, d-u-d-e. … Nobody knows where it came from, but it sprung into popularity in the last two weeks and now ever ybody’s using it.” Thus, what began as a dud in Ireland, a dolt, a clown, a rubbernecker, came to America with the immigrants, evolving into the Irish-American dude . How cool is that—117 years ago everybody was saying “ dude .” By the 1950s, dudes are “suave cats” hitting the bongos, which evokes an episode of Dobie Gillis on the old Philco. But as Bill Cosby says, I told you those stories to tell you this one. In 2004, I came home one night to several messages from a guy who claimed to be “the Dude.” I felt a Cheshire Cat grin crawl across my face when I looked up
his website. His real name was Jeff Dowd, the inspiration for “the Dude” in the Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski . As played by Jeff Bridges, “the Dude” is the love child of a hundred years of dude lore, a hippie slacker trapped in a Chandleresque detective story. The plot is baroque, the banter raunchy, and the humor as subtle as a machine gun. What holds it together is a word —abide , as in “the Dude abides.” To abide is to endure, outlast, continue, hold out, wait, prepare for; from a , to, and bide , dwell. Thus, a dude lives according to his or her own dudeness , which is a philosophy, a credo, a way to conduct yourself, a way to keep it together, stay cool, outlast everyone else who gives in, a way to stand by your friends, man, while the whole world changes around you.
DUENDE (SPANISH)
The blood surge, the vital force, the source of all impassioned art. When passion pales as an expression, duende is a fierce alternative to sentimental notions of inspiration. The Gypsies gave us this word for “little folk,” or “the blood of the earth,” from the Spanish duen de casa , master of the house. Duende eludes ordinary definitions, such as the pallid “power to attract via personal charm,” according to one usually reliable dictionary. Instead, duende is a lapidary word, with more levels than Troy. Traditionally, duende was simply a “playful hobgoblin,” a prankster spirit. To comprehend it, you need to turn to a poet like Federico García Lorca,
who knew of an older, deeper aspect of the word in his native Andalusia: a power that could be found in the “deep songs” of certain poets, on the dance floors of flamenco dancers, the cries from truly gifted guitar players, and the flourishes of toreros; from artists who possessed—or were possessed by— duende . More than virtuosity, different from inspiration, duende , Lorca believed, couldn’t be developed; it needed to be wrestled to the ground, subdued, then absorbed. For Lorca, art, poetry, music, playwriting were a quest for the truth of life, not entertainment; it was irrational, earthbound, and profoundly aware of death, down in the “bitter root.” “The duende ,” he wrote in Deep Song , “is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive, all that the performer is creating at a
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