A horse is a horse to most, but to a cowboy of the great American West, the stakes were high when it came to choosing between a ripper, a second saddle, a widow-maker or a wring-tail. Almost anyone might have guessed that a cowboy ate bacon and eggs from the chuck wagon, but who knows that breakfast might also have included Mexican strawberries, son-of-a-bitch stew and buggy top? It's fairly common knowledge that cowboys spent a lot of time making either war or peace with Indians, but who's heard of Indian annuity, Indian post office or playing the sober Indian? And when a lonely cowboy rode into a frontier town, why did he seek the company of a calico queen, a hurdy-gurdy girl or a painted cat?
Highly informative and endlessly entertaining, and accompanied by 80 black-and-white illustrations, the Dictionary of the American West explains these and more than 5,000 terms and expressions in passages that pack a crossbuck saddle's worth of American frontier history and wit. From a-going and a-coming to Zuni, this comprehensive volume captures the earthy, vibrant lexicons of cowboy and Indian culture, the fur trade, ranching, gambling, cattle and horses, and native flora and fauna of the West. And, perhaps for the first time, the Dictionary of the American West includes all the voices of America's richly woven frontier history - women, Mormons, Hispanics, blacks, French-Canadians, mountain men, half-breeds, immigrants and missionaries - to show how Western speech is actually a riotous, intriguing gumbo of cultures and languages that included French, Spanish, Indian Pidgin English and Chinook trade jargon. That's why words like tortilla, simpatico, bourgeois and muckamuck have become as much a part of American parlance as dogie, salty dog, smart-alec, and grub.
Here are just some of the lively terms included in the Dictionary of the American West: buggy boss - mocking slang for an Eastern ranch owner who inspected his ranch from a buggy because he didn't ride well enough to do it on horseback. The modern equivalent is a windshield farmer. Fumadiddle - something fancy, frilly, unnecessarily extravagant, something faradiddle, something fofarrow (adapted from the Spanish fanfarron - meaning "braggart" - and possibly from the French frou frou). Prayerbook - a cowboy's book of cigarette papers. Lunger - a person who came to the west in hopes that the dry air would benefit his health. Looking up a limb - what a hanged man is said to be doing.
For scholars, writers, word buffs and lovers of the American West, whether greenhorns or old hands, the Dictionary of the American West is the ultimate roundup of a language as outlandish, complex and downright ornery as the story of the American frontier itself.
