AWOL

Another fact that might surprise you (particularly if you have seen the iconic movie Blazing Saddles, which was both a tribute to, and a mocking of (among other things), old Westerns) is that most cowboys were Mexican and, of the remainder, a large proportion was African-American, so were largely dark skinned rather than the white heroes shown. In fact, two entire regiments of the western US Cavalry were African-American – the legendary “buffalo soldiers”. The Mexican contribution to cowboy culture is readily apparent when we examine some of its terminology. What word is more redolent of the “Wild West” than buckaroo? Yet buckaroo (first recorded in 1827) is merely a mispronunciation of the Spanish vaquero (literally “cow-man”, ultimately from Latin vacca, “a cow”). Anyone who ropes broncos with a lariat and pens them in a corral should be aware of their debt to the Spanish language. Bronco (1850) is the English spelling of broncho, Mexican Spanish for “wild” or “rough”.   A lariat is really la reata, “the lasso”, from the Spanish verb reatar, “to tie together”, from the Latin aptare, “to fit”. Strangely, the word corral, though Spanish, does not really belong with these others as it entered English much earlier (in 1582) and in a different context (it meant a place for parking vehicles, from Latin currus, “a cart”).