Cowboy

How to spell cowboy

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cowboy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cowboy mean?

1. nounA man, traditionally on horseback, who herds and tends cattle, especially in the western United States.
2. nounAn unscrupulous or unqualified person who does shoddy work, especially in the building trade.

Cowboy in a sentence

• The cowboy rounded up the cattle before the storm arrived.

• A cowboy builder left the roof leaking after taking the deposit.

• Every cowboy on the ranch carried a coil of rope.

• She warned her neighbours about the cowboy plumber who overcharged everyone.

Where does cowboy come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Cowboy is a plain English compound built from two very old native words. 'Cow' descends from Old English cu, the ancestral word for the female of domestic cattle, which in turn traces back to a Proto-Germanic and ultimately Proto-Indo-European root that gave many European languages their word for the animal. 'Boy' appeared in Middle English meaning a male servant or a young male, and over time settled into its modern sense of a young man. Put together, the word first described, quite literally, a boy or young man who tended cattle, and it is recorded in English from the 1700s. In the 1800s the term became firmly attached to the mounted cattle herders of the American West, and from there it spread into films and popular culture. A separate British informal sense, meaning a dishonest or unqualified tradesman, grew up much later in the twentieth century. Because both halves are short and familiar, the spelling holds no real surprises, though the 'oy' ending occasionally tempts an unwary 'oi'.

How the word is built

• cow (cattle)
• boy (young man); a transparent English compound