noun
pl. -·roos· a cowboy
Origin of buckaroo
probably from Spanish vaquero, cowboy ( from vaca, cow from Classical Latin vacca); influenced, influence by buck, nounbuckaroo
buck·a·roo buckaroo
Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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"buckaroo." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 05 December 2018. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/buckaroo>.
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buckaroo. (n.d.). Retrieved December 05th, 2018, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/buckaroo
buckaroo
also buck·er·oo
noun
pl. buck·a·roos, or buck·er·oos Western US See cowboy.
Origin of buckaroo
Alteration (perhaps influenced by buck 1) of Spanish vaquero from vaca cow from Latin vacca Word History: The iconic figure of the cowboy has gone by many other names in American English, including buckaroo, cowhand, cowman, cowpoke, cowpuncher, vaquero, and waddy, and two of these words, buckaroo and vaquero, come from Spanish. In the early 1800s, Spain and Mexico had tried to increase settlement in the sparsely populated grazing lands that are now the American Southwest. English speakers from the United States began to venture out into this Spanish-speaking region too, and in the late 1820s and early 1830s, the words buckaroo and vaquero start to appear in English. From the point of view of etymology, buckaroo and vaquero are in fact the same word. In Spanish, vaquero simply means “a man who deals with cows”—that is, a cowboy. It is derived from the word vaca, “cow,” by means of the suffix -ero. When vaquero was borrowed into English in southwest and central Texas, it kept the original Spanish spelling. In California, however, the Spanish word vaquero was Anglicized to buckaroo. (In Spanish, the letter v is pronounced like b, so this Anglicized spelling actually represents the sound of the Spanish word well. The change of a Spanish o, pronounced like English (ō) to an English oo in buckaroo can be seen in several other English words, such as calaboose and vamoose. ) Craig M. Carver, noted American dialectologist and author of American Regional Dialects, points out that the two words vaquero and buckaroo also reflect cultural differences between cattlemen in Texas and California. The Texas vaquero was typically a bachelor who hired on with different outfits, while the California buckaroo usually stayed on the same ranch where he was born or had grown up, and raised his own family there.THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Copyright © 2016, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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"buckaroo." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 05 December 2018. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/buckaroo>.
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buckaroo. (n.d.). Retrieved December 05th, 2018, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/buckaroo
Noun
(plural buckaroos)
- A cowboy, specifically, a working cowboy who generally does not do rodeos.
- One who sports a distinctive buckaroo style of cowboy clothing, boots, and heritage.
- Many cowboy poets have a buckaroo look and feel about them.
- A style of cowboy boot with a high and uniquely tapered heel.
- A reckless, headstrong person.
- Don’t run in looking for a fight like some kind of buckaroo.
- (slang) A dollar (variation of buck).
- That’ll be twenty buckaroos, buddy.
English Wiktionary. Available under CC-BY-SA license.
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Cite this page
MLA Style
"buckaroo." YourDictionary, n.d. Web. 05 December 2018. <https://www.yourdictionary.com/buckaroo>.
APA Style
buckaroo. (n.d.). Retrieved December 05th, 2018, from https://www.yourdictionary.com/buckaroo
