| 词汇 | wild and wooly west |
| 词源 | wild and wooly West. First came wild West, recorded in 1851 and so called because the American West was relatively lawless compared with the “civilized” East. Some 30 years passed before the more alliterative wild and wooly West was invented by some unknown poet, the wooly in the phrase perhaps referring to un- curried wild horses or the sheepskin chaps some cowboys wore, or perhaps to the bragging of cowboys in a popular song: I’m a wooly wolf and full of fleas, I never been curried below the knees— And this is my night to howl! The first use of the expression, in an 1885 book called Texas Cow Boy, has wild and wooly referring to a herd of steers. |
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