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AWOL

AWOL

  • Joined: Friday, February 24th, 2012
  • Articles: 6229
  • Comments: 1

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The battle for Hill 350

Hill 350 has emerged as the focal point of the renewed fighting along the Thai–Cambodian border, drawing national attention not only for its military importance but also for the human cost of the clashes. This explainer answers key questions to clarify why Hill 350 matters.

TAT seeks 6.7m Chinese arrivals in 2026

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) aims to restore the Chinese market to 6.7 million arrivals in 2026, rolling out more partnerships to offset a sharp plunge this year, including a letters of intent (LOIs) signed with a Chinese travel agent and the Haikou tourism authority.

The Wild West

The Wild West

When you hear words like ‘cowboy’, most people will immediately conjure up images from the old Western movies, of rough, tough and handsome men, who shoot first and ask questions later, before riding off into the sunset with their ‘gal’ by their side. It shouldn’t surprise you too much to learn that real life in the old West was nothing like it was portrayed on the silver screen, and the words used along with the demographics of the time were not accurately portrayed by the movies. For instance, believe it or not, the word cowboy did not originate in the USA. Despite its modern implications of sage-brush, cactus and the high chapparal, cowboy was first used in England in the 1620s. There is, however, a genuinely American equivalent and that is cow-hand, a word from the 1850s.

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”).