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NPR examines the origin of the most important word in the English language: Dude

Jason Weisberger
Jul 30, 2025
∙ Paid

A typical United States generational beef about clothing, and some poetry, seems to have given us a word that today has one thousand uses, dude.

"They were young. They were vacuous. They were effeminate — and they were drawing a bit of attention from the humorists and the cartoonists," Cohen told NPR.

He says this crowd had a certain way of dressing — usu…

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