buckaroo

English

WOTD – 30 May 2025

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

Modified from Spanish vaquero (“cowboy”), with the spelling influenced by buck (“(noun) male antelope, deer, etc.; adventurous or high-spirited young man; (verb) of a horse, etc.: to leap upward arching its back, coming down with head low and forelegs stiff, forcefully kicking its hind legs upward”).[1] Doublet of vaquero.

cognates

Noun

buckaroo (plural buckaroos) (US)

  1. (also attributive) A cowboy; specifically, a working cowboy who generally does not participate in rodeos.
    • 2005 September 2, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana, 00:51:25 from the start, in Brokeback Mountain, Universal City, Calif.: Focus Features, →OCLC:
      No thanks, cowboy. If I was to let every rodeo hand I pulled a bull off of buy me liquor, I'd have been an alcoholic long ago. Pullin' bulls off of you buckaroos is just my job. So save your money for your next entry fee, cowboy.
  2. (by extension)
    1. One who adopts a distinctive style of cowboy attire and heritage.
      Many cowboy poets have a buckaroo look and feel about them.
    3. A style of cowboy boot with a high heel tapered at the back.
  3. (Western US, figurative) A headstrong, reckless person; a hothead.
    Don’t run in looking for a fight like some kind of buckaroo.
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Etymology 2

Probably a fanciful elaboration of buck, influenced by buckaroo (etymology 1).

Noun

buckaroo (plural buckaroos)

  1. (US, slang) Synonym of buck (“a dollar”).
    Synonyms: buckaroonie, (US, slang) smackeroo
    That’ll be twenty buckaroos, buddy.
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See also

References

  1. ^ Robert N[orman] Smead (2004) “buckaroo”, in Vocabulario Vaquero/Cowboy Talk: A Dictionary of Spanish Terms from the American West, Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, →ISBN, page 30: “Watts suggests that the term was popularized in pulp literature because it conjures an image of a man on a bucking horse; indeed, A. A. Hill posits a blend with the term buck(ing) as the source for the first syllable.”

Further reading

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