An alternative to "gentlemen"

[macwilkin]

Not to stir the pot, but.....
most of my friends in the Great Basin region of Oregon/Nevada and up & down the western states who make their living out of the saddle still use "dude" in that manner.
These same modern day vaqueros & buckaroos (as they're called out here) also refer to each other on occasion as "gentlemen" (or shortened to "that gent'" etc). Just sayin'

***. The noted cowboy poet Gail Gardner, who resided in my father's hometown of Prescott, Arizona, once wrote a poem entitled "The Dude Wrangler", which contained the following description of a former cowpuncher who hired on with a "Dude Ranch":

He had his boots outside his britches;
They was made of leather green and red,
His shirt was of a dozen colors,
Loud enough to wake the dead.

Around his neck he had a 'kerchief,
Knotted through a silver ring;
I swear to Gawd he had a wrist-watch,
Who ever heard of such a thing.

-- The full poem can be read here:

http://parentseyes.arizona.edu/cowbo...abull_dude.htm

Then there's "The Zebra Dun", which includes these lines at the conclusion:

"Well, there's one thing, and a sure thing,
I've learned since I've been born,
That every educated feller
ain't a plumb greenhorn."

It can be found in the online collection of Alan Lomax's cowboy songs at the University of Nebraska:

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/englishunsllc/12/

Of course, as a historian by vocation and avocation, I tend to use sources that are more than 10 years old.

T.