Bronco
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A bronco, or bronc is a term used in the United States and Canada to refer to an untrained horse. It may refer to a feral horse that has lived in the wild its entire life, but is also used to refer to domestic horses not yet fully trained to saddle, and hence prone to unpredictable behavior, particularly bucking.
The term also refers to the bucking horses used in rodeo "rough stock" events, such as bareback riding and saddle bronc riding. In modern usage, it is seldom used any longer to refer to a "wild," or more accurately, a "feral" horse, as the Wild Horse Protection Act prevents the capture of Mustangs from the wild for use in rodeos.
The term comes from the Spanish language word bronco, meaning "rough", which in Mexican usage also describes a horse [1]. It was then borrowed and adapted in USA cowboy lingo. It has also been spelled "broncho," though this form is virtually unknown in the western United States, where the word is most common. Many other instances of cowboy jargon were similarly borrowed from Mexican cowboys, including words such lariat, chaps, and buckaroo, which are in turn corruptions of the Spanish la riata, chaparajos, and vaquero. For more such examples, consult List of English words of Spanish origin.
In the early American west, most cattle ranches simply allowed young horses to grow up in a feral state on the open range, capturing them at maturity to be broken-in or "broke" to make them tame enough to ride. Sometimes mustangs were rounded up as well, as the two populations often mixed.
Today, because it is illegal for mustangs to be captured from the wild and used in rodeos, the modern rodeo bucking horse is a domestic animal. Some are specifically bred for bucking ability and raised for the rodeo, others are spoiled riding horses who have learned to quickly and effectively throw off riders.
