A feminine counterpart to the masculine word dude.
"Dude" may perhaps have its origins from the word "duds" (always plural) as in "clothes" or "dress" as one (1883) definition of "dude" means "a man extremely fastidious in dress and manner".
Proof of this can be found in it's usage in Mark Twain's book "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" published in 1889 and also in an 1885 article in "Weekly New Mexican Review" where the words "dudes" and "dudesses" are used to describe actors in an operetta.
Newspeak for torture, used by the CIA and its allies. "Stress and duress" tactics are used in interrogations, and refer to a variety of tortures and forms of mistreatment which the CIA thinks are OK. These include:
sleep deprivation
overload of light complete darkness
stripping and sexually humiliating prisoners
threatening to torture and rape prisoners
threatening prisoners' families
making prisoners stand, sit etc. in uncomfortable positions to induce pain denial of satisfaction of basic rights and needs such as food, bedding, clothing and exercise
deliberate cultural insensitivity and intolerance
verbal abuse
use of painful "restraint" techniques
beatings
These techniques are widespread also in US prisons, although nominally illegal. They are more widely used in deregulated offshore gulags such as Guantanamo Bay, abu Ghraib in Iraq and Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan.
Don't be fooled - these tactics ARE TORTURE, and are defined as such both by the UN and by experts in trauma. Their role is to break down the sense of personality of the prisoner and to deliberately induce psychological trauma and crisis.
They are directly referred to in CIA handbooks - so the photos from abu Ghraib show a systematic pattern of torture, NOT rogue acts by a few stupid/evil/misguided soldiers.