The word, "Dude" stems from the word, "Doodle," as in "Yankee Doodle" (for those of you outside of the U.S., here’s the song. It was a British song lampooning a group of foppish American assholes of the 1700s who tried to take fashion to a whole new level. The line, "stuck a feather in his hat and called, it, ‘macaroni’" doesn’t mean some sorry sap jammed a feather on his head and called it a piece of pasta.

"Macaroni" was a reference to a fashion trend that began in the 1760s among some rich, British fucks. They wore over-the-top outfits, large, heavily powdered wigs and spoke with little emotion and as if they were neither male nor female.

This "macaroni" crowd (sometimes spelled, "maccaroni") used the term because they had visited Italy, gained a love for macaroni (a pasta unknown to England) and had formed what they called, "The Macaroni Club." These guys would refer to anything that was fashionable as "very macaroni." The best an uncultured colonist could do if he wanted to imitate the Macaroni Club was stick a feather in his cap.

Interestingly, the Dude is anything but foppish, stylish or asexual. His Dudeness has certainly taken a negative and turned it into a positive... kind of!

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