Waddie

[Mark Semich]

Don sez:

>	Well, as the whizball researcher that I am, I checked several
>unabridged dictionaries and even had my old college history prof check
>his huge reference library... and there was no mention of "waddie". Hm.

According to Webster's, the word fist appeared in 1927:

3wad-dy or wad-die \'waEd-e]\ n,  pl waddies
[origin unknown]
West
(1927)
:COWBOY

But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it's actually somewhat  
older and has some negative connotations:

waddy (2)  U.S slang.  Also waddie
[Origin uncertain.]  A cattle rustler; a cowboy, esp. a temporary cowhand.
1897 E. HOUGH Story of a Cowboy 279 "A genuine rustler was called a  
'waddy', a name difficult to trace to its origin."
1927 J. LOMAX Cowboy Songs 374 "He rides a fancy horse, he's a favorite  
man, Can get more credit than a common waddie can."
1931 W. ROGERS in S.K. Gragert 'Will Rogers' Weekly Articles' (1982) V.  
470 "You town waddies know what a combine is?"

The OED also gives waddy (1) as an Australian word, meaning "an aborginal  
war club." (The word's first written usage being from 1788.)  In Aus, this  
word eventually came to mean "to strike, beat, or kill with a waddy": 

1855 LD. SHERBROOKE poems (1885) 100 'The black thieves appeared, My  
shepards they waddied, my cattle they speared.'

Although it seems unlikely that the same word moved from Aus to the U.S.,  
it does strike me as possible that the "cattle rustler" definition could  
have evolved from this latter Australian usage.  And once the word was in  
usage in the U.S as "cattle rustler" it could have continued to evolve  
into just meaning "cowboy."  (Kind of like "Hacker" in reverse :-) )