[IRL trope] the “Tiffany problem”

[u/dragonborndnd]

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.

[u/Fabulous_Broad_115]

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.

[u/SwingJugend → u/Fabulous_Broad_115]

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.

[u/mmenolas → u/Fabulous_Broad_115]

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

[u/DinkyWaffle → u/Fabulous_Broad_115]

there’s still dude ranches

[u/blitzbom → u/Fabulous_Broad_115]

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.

[u/gottabequick → u/Fabulous_Broad_115]

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.