Where'd That Come From

Ever wonder where some of our westernisms some from?

Well take the famous "Buckaroo" for example. Well that's a simple one. It is a mispronounciation of the spanish Vaquero" (cowboy) that just stuck. Same with "Calaboose." It comes from the spanish for jail or "calabosa."

Every wonder why they call the fancy rooms on a luxury liner or train "state rooms"? Well on the old Mississippi river boats in the 1800's the larger cabins were named, not numbered, and they were named after, that's right you guessed it, States of the Union. The Alabama suite, the New Yorker etc." Thus the stateroom.

How about the saying "Keep the bll rolling? It came from the 1840's first known political slogan - 'Tippecanoe and Tyler, too'. A song of the same name was considered to have sung Harrison into the presidency:

Don't you hear from every quarter, quarter, quarter,
Good news and true,
That swift the ball is rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.

Harrison's campaign literature referred to Victory Balls. These weren't, as we might expect, dance parties that celebrated his famous victory, but ten-foot diameter globes made of tin and leather, which were pushed from one campaign rally to the next. His supporters were invited to attend rallies and push the ball on to the next town, chanting 'keep the ball rolling'.

Hold your horses needs no explanation except to some modern techno nerd who doesn't know that before Henry ford we all rode horses.

"It's a cinch" is another westernism. The cinch is the leather or cloth belt that goes from one side of the saddle under the horses belly to the other side of the saddle to tighten things up. Whether the saying comes from this or not isn't definitive but it's a cinch it had something to do with it.