Buckaroo

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant Martha, this is Kevin John Black. How are you today?

Hello, Kevin John Black. Where are you calling from?

I’m calling from San Francisco, California.

Oh, hey. How’s in San Francisco?

Oh, it’s beautiful today.

Well, Kevin John Black, what are you calling about?

Well, you know, it’s funny. I have a friend who lives in New York City. His name’s Richard.

And I try to give him a call and let him know what’s going on with words, because he’s a big wordy, too.

And we were actually talking about retronyms that you discussed not too long ago.

And he brought up a subject.

He said, Kevin John, what’s the derivation of the word buckaroo?

And, of course, he knew.

So I said, you know, I have no idea.

And he said, well, I know, but I’ll give you a little hint.

It sounds like another word, and the first letter might be mispronounced as another letter.

So I thought about it for a little while, and then I said, well, let me see, how about B, V, V, and I, vaquero.

So he said, that’s it.

He said that somehow vaquero got changed into buckaroo.

So it was someone listening to vaquero, and then they couldn’t pronounce it, and instead of saying vaquero, they say buckaroo.

Right, the Spanish word for cowboy.

Right, right.

So I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not, or if that’s the exact derivation,

But then we thought, well, I wonder if there are any other type of words like this,

And if there are, what would be the name for that situation?

What you’re talking about is the process by which that word goes from a Spanish spelling and pronunciation

To an English spelling and pronunciation, right?

Correct.

There’s a boring word for it, but there is a word for it.

It’s rationalization.

We rationalize the word in English because we only hear it at first, right?

If you’re not reading it, if you’re just hearing the word vaquero

And you’re trying to make it fit your understanding of English,

You work it out and you say, all right, so that sounds like a B kind of at the beginning

And there’s a hard sound in there that’s probably a K, probably a CK

Because we don’t have Ks standing alone in English.

You kind of work it out so that it becomes an English word

Follows generally accepted English spelling, English pronunciation, and then you write it that way.

If you look at the early uses of buckaroo in English, this is not going to surprise you,

You’ll find that the spellings are all over the map as people try to rationalize this.

And then gradually some consensus developed over how to spell it,

And the spelling that we have today, B-U-C-K-A-R-O-O, is now the accepted one.

Well, Kevin, John, I can think of a couple more words like that.

Okay.

Are you aware of any others like that?

You know, I’m not aware of any other rationalizations, more than the ones I do every day.

Yeah, sure, sure.

Well, all of the ones I’m thinking of are cowboy-type words.

Oh, these are all from Spanish, then?

Sure, yeah.

Like lariat.

Lariat, exactly, from Spanish, la reata.

And how about vamoose?

Oh, sure.

Let’s get out of here.

Oh, very good, yeah.

Sweet, sweet.

And cinch, most people don’t know this, but cinch, as in to cinch a belt, comes from Spanish.

No kidding.

Bronco and Mustang, and there’s a ton of these.

So, Kevin John Black, how does that sound?

That sounds great.

I really thank you for that.

We were just thinking, gee, are there other words?

It’s fascinating that they’re all kind of cowboy terms.

Yeah, isn’t it?

Well, we just kind of focus on that because that’s the word.

But this happens in English as well.

You know the word ornery?

Mm—

Or ornery?

Well, it’s spelled ornery, O-R-N-E-R-Y.

That is a rationalization of a dialect pronunciation of the word ordinary.

So it actually happens within the language as well, not necessarily from another language.

We rationalize it to kind of fit what we’re hearing.

Very good, very good.

Cool.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you so much for your call.

We enjoy the show, and I’m sure I’ll get Richard to listen to more.

Excellent, all of them.

They’re all online at waywordradio.org.

Great.

Thank you very much.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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