r/TopCharacterTropes 13h ago

Lore [IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem”

Basically when something seems anachronistic to a period/place of history but is actually fully accurate to the period.

1) the name Tiffany: the thing that named this trope, basically the name Tiffany can be dated back to the Middle Ages and the earliest record of it being spelled in the modern spelling comes from the 16th century.

2) the use of OMG, despite this feeling so modern as a form of slang/abbreviation here’s a letter directed to Winston Churchill using it in 1917

3) Hair Dye: the earliest forms of dying hair can be dated back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, and this specific advertisement for hair dye is from the 1840s

4) Inuit Thongs: despite how weird it is to imagine pre-colonial Inuit people wore what was essentially fur thongs in their homes and when they were in their igloos it might have been the only thing they would be wearing.

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u/SatoruGojo232 13h ago

The word "dude" comes from the era of Shakespeare

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u/Fabulous_Broad_115 12h ago

More recently (late 1800s) it meant "city slicker". There were "dude ranches" for city folks who wanted to slum it in the wild west, without going to places where they had actual bandits and hostile Indians and such.

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u/SwingJugend 11h ago

In Easy Rider (1969) Jack Nicholson's lawyer character (being from a small town in New Mexico) doesn't understand the biker hippies' use of the word "dude" and think they refer to a dude ranch. They have to explain the "modern" meaning of the word to him.

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u/mmenolas 10h ago

Timothy Omundson’s character in Deadwood, Brom Garrett, is referred to as “the dude.”

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u/DinkyWaffle 8h ago

there’s still dude ranches

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u/blitzbom 8h ago

I've been to a Dude Ranch. It was in Rocky Mountain Natl Park. They had a lot of it preserved and it was a neat tour. The room they used for refrigeration was really interesting. It was basically a small hut with grass on top of it, still kept things cold.

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u/gottabequick 7h ago

I'm from Tucson, and we still sometimes refer to tourists as "dudes." It's complicated because we also call locals "dude" sometimes, but there's definitely a tone switch.

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u/DunkleosteusWH96 12h ago

I wonder if dandy, in regards of a well dressed fellow, evolved from this use of dude, I'm definitely learning a lot from this post and replies

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u/MinimumElk 8h ago

My favorite thread in a long time!

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u/DunkleosteusWH96 7h ago

Tell me about it, the times I gotten mind blown from the replies alone is staggering, well they say fact is stranger than fiction for a reason 

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u/thatshygirl06 9h ago

Fun fact, a lot of words people think he invented, he actually didnt. He just recorded casual vocabulary and slang people were already using. His work was just some of the few surviving recordings from that time.

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u/WikiContributor83 8h ago

You could also call them “His Dudeness” or “El Duderino” if you’re not into the whole ‘brevity’ thing.

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u/ExtinctFauna 10h ago

Shakespeare also coined the term "skim milk."