"Western Lore and Language is the first dictionary to document the extraordinary range of words that are an integral part of the West, old and new. Focusing on words that either originated in the West (forty-niner, skookum, quaking aspen), are used mainly in the West (butte, skink, Spanish sword), or are associated with the West (mesa, rodeo, surfer), Thomas Clark has compiled an entertaining and essential reference of the Western word. This generously illustrated resource gives readers everything they need to talk western: a pinch of Border Spanish, (Tex-Mex, Tejana, Spanglish), some California Mellow, a generous portion of Old West, and a broad scoop of New West (from vineyard cultivation to Valley Girl vapidity). For more serious readers, the dictionary also offers complete lexicological entries for each word - part of speech, pronunciation, definition, source, etymology, dates, cross-references, and editorial comments."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

First published in 1959, Iona and Peter Opie's The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that is also a splendid and enduring work of literature. Going outside the nursery, with its assortment of parent-approved entertainments, to observe and investigate the day-to-day creative intelligence and activities of children, the Opies bring to life the rites and rhymes, jokes and jeers, laws, games, and secret spells of what has been called "the greatest of savage tribes, and the only one which shows no signs of dying out."

Did you ever need to spell “dogie” (as in, get-along-little), or need to know what a “sakey” is? This is the book that can tell you how to spell, pronounce, and define over 5,000 terms relative to the American West. Want to know what a “breachy” cow is? Turn to page 43 to learn that it’s an adjective used to describe a cow that has a tendency to find her way through fences where she isn’t supposed to be. Describes some teenagers we know… Spend hours perusing the dictionary at random, or read straight through to give you a flavor of the West from its beginnings to contemporary days. Laced with photographs and maps, the Dictionary of the American West will make you sound like an expert on all things Western, even if you don’t know your dingus from a dinner plate. Compiled of words brought into English from Native Americans, emigrants, Mormons, Hispanics, migrant workers, loggers, and fur trappers, the dictionary opens up history and culture in an enchanting way. From “Aarigaa!” to “zopilote,” the Dictionary of the American West is a “valuable book, a treasure for any literate American’s library.” (Tony Hillerman)

Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Society in v. 1-11, 1925-34. After 1934 they appear in Its Bulletin.

In the Cowboy State (also known as Wyoming), the Wild West has never died. The West has long been the favored repository of the East?s cultural fantasies, and in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Eastern expectations and demands largely shaped Wyoming's image in this role. Becoming Western shows how the myth of the ?American West? has acted as a force both in history and in individual lives. Liza J. Nicholas interrogates the creation of Western lore by looking at five stories that focus on, respectively, Jack Flagg, a Wyoming legend and the supposed model for Owen Wister?s Virginian; an equestrian statue of Buffalo Bill sculpted by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney; the dude ranch; the creation of the American studies program at Yale; and a campaign for the U.S. Senate. Each story reveals the ways in which the East consciously imagined and manipulated the West and how Wyomingites in turn interpreted this identity, manipulated it, and put it to work for themselves. Becoming Western is a fascinating study of how invented traditions can become potent cultural and political ideology on a local as well as a national level.

This book, originally published in 1944, has 5,000 words of cowboy language as vibrant now as it was in the old American frontier. The native cowman forged his own language. Like other men of the soil, he created similes & metaphors, salty & unrefined, but sparkling with stimulating vigor. In the early days, many men with college degrees came west, fell in love with the freedom of range life, & remained. Not bound by conventions, they soon drifted into the infectious parlance of the cow country. This volume has been prepared to help preserve this lingo for posterity. The terms have been gathered from every part of the range. Within the cowman's figures of speech lie the rich field of his subtle humor & strength -- unique, original, full-flavored. Illus.

This book aims to explain social variation in language, otherwise the meaning and motivation of language change in its social aspect. It is the expanded and improved 2nd edition of the author’s self-published volume with the same title, based on revised and adapted posts on the author’s Languagelore blog. Each vignette calls attention to points of grammar and style in contemporary American English, especially cases where language is changing due to innovative usage. In every case where an analysis contains technical or recondite vocabulary, a Glossary precedes the body of the essay, and readers can also consult the Master Glossary which contains all items glossed in the text. The unique form of the book’s presentation is aimed at readers who are alert to the peculiarities of present-day American English as they pertain to pronunciation, grammar, and style, without “dumbing down” or compromising the language in which the explanations are couched. “b>Praise for the First Edition “Michael Shapiro is one of the great thinkers in the realm of linguistics and language use, and his integrated understanding of language and speech in its semantic and pragmatic structure, grammatical and historical grounding, and colloquial to literary stylistic variants is perhaps unmatched today. This book is a treasure to be shared.” Robert S. Hatten, The University of Texas at Austin “Jewel of a book. . . . a gift to us all from Michael Shapiro. Like a Medieval Chapbook it can be a kind of companion whose vignettes on language use can be randomly and profitably consulted at any moment. Some may consider these vignettes opinionated. That would be to ignore how deeply anchored each vignette is in Shapiro’s long and rare polyglot experience with language. It could well serve as a night table book, taken up each night to read and reflect upon ––to ponder––both in the twilight mind and in the deeper reaches of associative somnolence. There is nothing else like it that I know of.” James W. Fernandez, The University of Chicago

Spanish is an important source for terms and expressions that have made their way into the English of the southwestern United States. Vocabulario Vaquero/Cowboy Talk is the first book to list all Spanish-language terms pertaining to two important activities in the American West-ranching and cowboying-with special reference to American Indian terms that have come through Spanish. In addition to presenting the most accurate definitions available, this A-to-Z lexicon traces the etymology of words and critically reviews and assesses the specialized English sources for each entry. It is the only dictionary of its kind to reference Spanish sources. The scholarly treatment of this volume makes it an essential addition to the libraries of linguists and historians interested in Spanish/English contact in the American West. Western enthusiasts of all backgrounds will find accessible entries full of invaluable information. Robert N. Smead is Associate Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Brigham Young University. Ronald Kil is a New Mexico cowboy and artist who has worked on ranches and feedlots all over the West. Richard W. Slatta is Professor of History at North Carolina State University and the author of numerous books, including Comparing Cowboys and Frontiers.