cowboy

Where it comes from

Cowboy ordinarily means a person who tends cattle, especially on horseback. Cowboy is an English compound of cow and boy, first used for someone who tended cattle. In the American West it came to mean a usually mounted ranch hand, but the work and much of its equipment and vocabulary developed from Spanish and Mexican vaquero traditions. The cattle worker became a national symbol through Wild West shows, fiction, film, and television.

How the meaning developed

That glamorous, usually white image obscured a diverse workforce that included Mexican, Black, Native American, and European American hands doing difficult wage labor.