Tuesday, June 08, 2004 :::
Hungrier Than a Woodpecker With a Headache
I recently looked at this book: Western Words: a Dictionary of the Old West by Ramon Adams. I was so stuck for blog material taken with some of the expressions I thought I'd share some of them. Your assignment is to use one of them in conversation today:
Five Beans in the Wheel: Was simply five bullets in the chamber, which accomodated six; one was left empty to give the firing pin a safe place to rest between shootings; only fools and desperados rested their pins on a live cartridge in order to have an extra shot in an emergency.
Monkey Ward Wife Sent on Approval: A long way of saying homely; it refers to something ordered from the Montgomery Ward catalog and kept whether you liked it or not.
Sunned His Moccasins: To get thrown from a horse. (one of the 30+ terms in this book for that)
Sucamagrowl: A sweet pudding or pie.
Airin' the Lungs: What a cowboy calls cussin'.
Arms: See ace in the hole, artillery, belly-gun, black-eyed Susan, blow-pipe, blue lightnin', blue whistler, border draw, buffalo gun, buscadero belt, cross-draw, Curly-Bill spin, cutter, derringer, dewey, double-roll, draw, equalizer, fill your hand, flame-thrower, gambler's gun, hair trigger, hardware, heeled, hog-leg, Iron, Kansas neck-blister, lead chucker, lead pusher, man-stopper, meat in the pot, no beans in the wheel, one-eyed scribe, peacemaker, plow handle, road-agent's spin, scatter-gun, Sharps, shooting iron, six-gun, talkin' iron, thumb buster.
I heard about this book from reading The Cowboys by William Dale Jennings, one of my favorite books and favorite movies. Reading the above link what I just found about the author was very interesting considering I knew absolutely nothing about him.
I just love books that lead to other cool books.
::: posted by tom at 10:19 AM
