Oaters

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Characterized as films or stories centered around cowboys and the American West
2. Designed to evoke themes of frontier life, adventure, and rugged individualism
3. Typically featuring elements of action, romance, and moral dilemmas in a western setting

Etymology: "Oaters" is the plural of "oater", a slang term for a cowboy western film. The noun is built from the ordinary word "oat", the grain fed to horses, plus the suffix "-er", so the name points to the animals that populate these movies rather than to the cowboys themselves. The image is of a horse-driven genre where oats were a routine part of the scenery. The term appeared around the mid-1940s, when Hollywood's western output was at its height and film slang loved clipped, playful formations. Other genre nicknames of the period followed the same pattern of turning a familiar object into shorthand for a whole category of movie.

Synonyms: western films, cowboy movies