What we get wrong about 'um' and 'uh,' with Valerie Fridland
Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
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The Rise of the Dude Ranch
The word dude ranch comes from when urban city slickers dressed as cowboys and tried to go play at being a cowboy as they went west. But instead of being sort of a pretentious dandy, it came to mean any overdressed outsider. That meaning that sort of spanky outfit got picked up by the zoot suitors in the 1930s and 40s. Once it became part of zoot suit culture, then it got adopted by surfer and druggy subculture. And then it became cool to be a dude.
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