I have become fascinated with the word dude. The actor on SNL who used to play to copy guy, Rob Schneider, does a bit about the utility of the word dude. I don’t want steal his material but he details the incredible utility of the word dude. It is not nearly as useful as the word fuck, which as some of you know, can be any part of speech.
Dude has fascinated me as an interjection mostly. It is a very expressive word, but its use at the beginning of a sentence is the most interesting. By prefixing whatever you say with dude, you have license to interrupt and proceed with your own thoughts.
Albert Einstein himself could be delivering a talk on the theory of relativity and someone in the front row could say, “Dude, your fly is down.” and it would fine.
Some snob in the second row would nudge his friend and say, “can you believe it? He interrupted Einstein.”
His friend would shrug and say, “He said dude.”
“Oh, right.”
Even in the midst of a gaggle of surfers, it is completely appropriate etiquette to interrupt the height of any story to say, “Dude, you left your lights on.”
“Oh, right. Thanks, dude.”
Two paramedics are frantically performing CPR on a dying victim, someone in the crowd around them can say any of the following:
“Dude, your mom’s on the phone.”
“Dude, did you fart?”
“Dude, I’m gonna need to stop for gas.”
“Dude, that guy looks like a monkey.”
All of those would be met with tacit approval.
