Buckaroo

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˌbʌkəˈɹuː/

Definitions

1. A cowboy or ranch worker, especially one who tends cattle in the American West
2. A person who works with horses and cattle on ranches in western regions, managing livestock across open ranges
3. An experienced ranch hand or cowboy skilled in herding and controlling cattle in frontier or rural areas

Etymology: In 1827, an English speaker in the American West wrote down a word for a cattle herder as "bakhara." Sixty-odd years later it turned up as "buckayro." By 1907 it had settled into "buckaroo," and it looked so thoroughly English, with its "buck" and its jaunty ending, that the Spanish word underneath was easy to miss. That word was "vaquero," the herdsman of Spanish America, built on "vaca," cow, which goes back to Latin "vacca." The origin of "vacca" itself is unknown. English took "vaquero" directly, recorded from 1826 as a Western word for the native cattle-drivers of Spanish America. Alongside that faithful borrowing, a second, rougher version grew up in everyday speech. The two now sit side by side as a doublet: one Spanish word that entered English twice and came out as two. The sound changes are ordinary ones. In Spanish, "v" and "b" are pronounced alike, so "vaquero" reaches an English listener as something close to "baquero." The English ear then did what it often does with foreign words and pulled the unfamiliar sounds toward familiar ones. "Buck" was right at hand. It could mean a male deer, a spirited young man, or what a horse does when it arches its back and tries to throw its rider. All three suited a cowhand. The ending drifted toward the bouncy "-oo," and the word stopped sounding borrowed at all. The Latin root has relatives across Europe. Medieval Latin had "vaccārius," cowherd, and French has "vacher." A Late Latin word, "baccalārius," meant a landless serf and possibly a cowherd, though that second sense is uncertain. It is the source of "bachelor," which means the buckaroo may have a very distant and unproven cousin in every unmarried man and every university graduate. Folk explanations have tried to cut the Spanish out entirely. Some take the "buck" literally, as though the word were invented from bucking horses. Others propose an African-language source. Neither holds up. The trail from "vaquero" through "bakhara" and "buckayro" is documented step by step, and the changes along the way are the normal kind. "Buck" shaped the spelling but is not the source. The word also found a home. In the Great Basin, and especially in northern Nevada, ranch hands came to prefer it as the name for themselves. "Vaquero" had been the earlier word there. The Nevada buckaroo working cattle in the high desert still carries the old Spanish herdsman in his title, even though only one of the two words still sounds like it.

Synonyms: cowboy, rancher