Dictionary of the American West: Over 5,000 Terms and Western Expressions from AARIGAA! to Zopilote (Epic Adventures Book 8)

A wild dive into the talk distinctive to the West, with lore that makes its true character, its many peoples, and its astonishing landscape come rousingly alive.

Between “Aarigaa” and “zopilote” you’ll find keys to understanding not only cowmen but many Westerners neglected in previous dictionaries, including Native peoples, women, miners, Mormons, Hispanics, fur traders, French Canadians, Basques—all the carnival of human beings who lived and still thrive between Texas and Alaska.

In their copious and colorful terms you’ll see the chief preoccupations of the Westerners of the nineteenth century, women, booze, and death, and learn that one of the phrases for dying was “ride a painted horse with your face to the west.” You’ll see the terms that Native peoples have contributed to English, like “red road, sweat lodge, powwow,” and “fry bread,” and the words that have migrated from Spanish into Western English.

You’ll learn about the land that shapes the people in words like “gullywasher, badlands, sakey, wash, malpais,” and many more. One discovery alone is worth the whole reading adventure—can you guess what a “buck nun” is?

Sound in scholarship yet rich in fun.

Alistair Cooke wrote of Westopedia, “There has never been anything like this enchanting book. It is inconceivable that anyone with the faintest interest in the West, in its history, facts and fables, idioms and mores, can ever again be without this exhaustive bible of the West.”