英语单词大师：Slang

 Howdy. I'm Adam Phillips, sitting in for Avi Arditti and Rosanne Skirble. For this week's Wordmaster, we go the rodeo.

SPEAKER: Welcome to the Montana rodeo on a Saturday night!

The Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association is holding its national championships this week in Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the culmination¹ of hundreds of county and state rodeo competitions, like this one at the Beaverhead, Montana, County Fair.

(SOUND)It's a special kind of athletics² on display at the rodeo, where riders show off their cattle-roping skills or struggle to stay aboard wildly bucking³ horses and bulls. And the rodeo air is always filled with the special words that bull riders, ropers, and steer⁴ wrestlers use to describe what they do. It's not always easy to understand what they're saying. Rodeo organizer Jack⁵ Bergeson explains, for example, that the rodeo term bulldogging has nothing to do with either bulls or dogs.

JACK BERGESON: It's another word for steer wrestling. You come out of the chute and you are going out full speed and you are jumping off a horse onto a steer and trying to throw it down. The steer would be the bull and dogging itwould be wrestling with it and throwing it down. It's a big man's event. They call timed events businessman's events because [with those] you're not out there getting dirty like the ruffies.

Ruffies are the rodeo cowboys who take the greatest risks. They ride wild horses called broncs, or they ride horses without saddles, or they take a timed ride on bulls hand-picked for their mean tempers. Animals like that are called rank.

Breaking a horse is one well-known cowboy term for taming or training a spirited horse so that it will accept a saddle and a rider. But one cowboy I talked to says that even horses that are ridden bareback -- that is, without saddles -- are fitted with what is called rigging.

COWBOY: It's a bareback rigging. It's small, little piece of leather, 10 or 12 inches wide, and that's what these guys hang on to with one hand. That's called a rigging. I don't know if that's so much slang but it's a unique term.

Many timed rodeo events based on ranching⁷ skills. For example, steer wrestling, or wrassling as it's usually pronounced on the rodeo circuit, is an event where a steer is cornered, roped, then wrestled⁸ to the ground and immobilized. And it is often necessary on the ranch⁶ to ride wild, untamed horses in order to train them. Riding wild bulls probably began as a wild entertainment.

Whatever the animal chosen -- steer, wild horse or bull -- chances are excellent the cowboy will soon be hitting the ground himself.

JACK BERGESON: There is phrase we like to use. It's called the dirt bath. A dirt bath is when you fall off this horse or this bull, you are falling quite a ways. And when you hit the ground, you took yourself a dirt bath! Because you are hitting that dirt pretty hard.

Rodeo work is dangerous work, and cowboys can get hurt or even killed. Bull riding -- where a cowboy jumps atop a wild bull weighing 800 kilograms or more, and tries to ride it for a full seven seconds before being thrown -- is especially risky⁹.

Once the rider is thrown -- and he always is -- he is protected by so-called rodeo clowns like Kevin Higley of Hooper, Utah, who jump into the ring to distract the animal and prevent the cowboy from being gored¹⁰ when the horned bull is feeling, as they say, hooky.

KEVIN HIGLEY: Hooky means he's gonna come after you and he's gonna fight. And look out, because he's gonna try to get you and hook you out of there. If you get a guy punching his hand with his fist and saying 'this bull is gonna be hooky,' there is a pretty good chance he is going to thump¹¹ somebody before he gets out of the arena¹². It's just 'getting thumped¹³.' 'You're gonna get thumped if you don't watch what's going on.'

Some other things we use is [the phrase] pull your skirt up. The romance of the Western scene is a little different than the professional athletes you see on the professional football games. We all have to keep ourselves in pretty good shape. But we don't have the professional trainers who follow us around and say 'Aw, its okay, you don't need to go out there today.' You got to get out there and just go. So just life your skirt up and get on with it. Get to the next one.

And rodeo manager Jack Bergeson and his pals¹⁴ say there are plenty of phrases for the tourists and other non-rodeo types who come to the rodeo just to be entertained -- safely.

JACK BERGESON AND OTHERS: Rookies, city slickers -- you know ... you! [Laughter]

Maybe it's time for me to be skinnin' it -- that is, getting out of here -- before someone puts me on a horse. For Wordmaster, I'm Adam Phillips at the rodeo in Dillon, Montana.

1 culmination   

n.顶点；最高潮

参考例句：

• The space race reached its culmination in the first moon walk.太空竞争以第一次在月球行走而达到顶峰。
• It may truly be regarded as the culmination of classical Greek geometry.这确实可以看成是古典希腊几何的登峰造级之作。

2 athletics   

n.运动，体育，田径运动

参考例句：

• When I was at school I was always hopeless at athletics.我上学的时候体育十分糟糕。
• Our team tied with theirs in athletics.在田径比赛中，我们队与他们队旗鼓相当。

3 bucking   

v.（马等）猛然弓背跃起( buck的现在分词 )；抵制；猛然震荡；马等尥起后蹄跳跃

参考例句：

• a bucking bronco in the rodeo 牛仔竞技表演中一匹弓背跳跃的野马
• That means we'll be bucking grain bags, bustin's gut. 那就是说咱们要背这一袋袋的谷子，得把五脏都累坏。 来自辞典例句

4 steer   

vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶

参考例句：

• If you push the car, I'll steer it.如果你来推车，我就来驾车。
• It's no use trying to steer the boy into a course of action that suits you.想说服这孩子按你的方式行事是徒劳的。

5 jack   

n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克

参考例句：

• I am looking for the headphone jack.我正在找寻头戴式耳机插孔。
• He lifted the car with a jack to change the flat tyre.他用千斤顶把车顶起来换下瘪轮胎。

6 ranch   

n.大牧场，大农场

参考例句：

• He went to work on a ranch.他去一个大农场干活。
• The ranch is in the middle of a large plateau.该牧场位于一个辽阔高原的中部。

7 ranching   

adj.放牧的

参考例句：

• They cleared large tracts of forest for farming, logging and ranching. 他们清除了大片的森林以经营农耕、采伐与畜牧。
• This is a trade center in a ranching and oil-producing region. 这是一个牧场与产油区的贸易中心。

8 wrestled   

v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤

参考例句：

• As a boy he had boxed and wrestled. 他小的时候又是打拳又是摔跤。
• Armed guards wrestled with the intruder. 武装警卫和闯入者扭打起来。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 risky   

adj.有风险的，冒险的

参考例句：

• It may be risky but we will chance it anyhow.这可能有危险，但我们无论如何要冒一冒险。
• He is well aware how risky this investment is.他心里对这项投资的风险十分清楚。

10 gored   

v.（动物）用角撞伤，用牙刺破( gore的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He was gored by a bull. 他被公牛顶伤。
• The bull gored the farmer to death. 公牛用角把农夫抵死了。 来自《简明英汉词典》

11 thump   

v.重击，砰然地响；n.重击，重击声

参考例句：

• The thief hit him a thump on the head.贼在他的头上重击一下。
• The excitement made her heart thump.她兴奋得心怦怦地跳。

12 arena   

n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台

参考例句：

• She entered the political arena at the age of 25. 她25岁进入政界。
• He had not an adequate arena for the exercise of his talents.他没有充分发挥其才能的场所。

13 thumped   

v.重击， （指心脏）急速跳动( thump的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Dave thumped the table in frustration . 戴夫懊恼得捶打桌子。
• He thumped the table angrily. 他愤怒地用拳捶击桌子。

14 pals   

n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙

参考例句：

• We've been pals for years. 我们是多年的哥们儿了。
• CD 8 positive cells remarkably increased in PALS and RP(P CD8+细胞在再生脾PALS和RP内均明显增加(P 来自互联网