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Monday, November 8, 2010

The Importance Of Being A Dude

This blog post originally appeared 7/24/2008.

While perusing the pages of The New York Public Library Desk Reference, 3rd Edition, I looked at the bottom of the page containing common crossword puzzle words and saw the following fabulous fact:
The word dude was coined by Oscar Wilde and his friends. It is a combination of the words duds and attitude.
Oscar is the original dude. He had an immeasurable amount of style; this photo from 1882 captures him in his favorite coat. Talk about strutting his stuff! Tres chic!


Oscar was dude-a-rific not only for concocting new words, but also for his ready wit. Here are a few Wilde quotes to get you through the day:

The good ended happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

I can resist everything except temptation.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal.


Definitely not a dude who would ever misplace his car!

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Ed. Elizabeth Knowles. Oxford University Press, 2004.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscar_Wilde_3g07095u.jpg

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