Tag Archives: lasso

Yesterday I watched a short video on the New York Times site about the mathematics of lasso tricks – you know, the famous image we have of a lasso being spun in a flat circle. It wasn’t long on details of the math, though it did have a few nice demonstrations of the tricks. But what caught my attention was how the narrator said lasso.

How do you say lasso?

I posed the question on Twitter and got interesting results. It seems that Americans generally, or at least the ones who responded (who seem mostly or all to be urbanites, but from California, Texas, Massachusetts, Utah, Washington, and several other states, but not Wyoming or Montana), say it the way the New York Times guy did. The Canadians – as well as one British guy from Birmingham – say it the way I do. (I’m from Alberta and grew up surrounded by ranchers – i.e., “cowboys.”)

The Oxford English Dictionary lists both pronunciations, but quotes Fowler as saying that my pronunciation is preferred “by those who use it” (i.e., the actual thing, not just the word).

I won’t rope you along any longer. The way I say lasso – the only way I’ve ever really been used to hearing it, either (but I don’t listen to much country music or watch a lot of western movies) – is /læ su/, with the stress on the second syllable or close to even between the two. “Lassoo,” we might write it. The way the Americans all seem to say lasso (though I’m sure there must be exceptions) is with an o vowel at the end, and the stress on the first syllable: “lassoh.”

Now, it’s our word, we rustled it fair and square,* so we can say it how we will – Americans one way, Canadians and Brits another – but we might want to look at its origin for some clue to why Americans say it that way while Canadians and Brits don’t. English got it from the Spanish word lazo, pronounced “la so.” And there are more Spanish speakers in the US to influence that. (Branding expert Nancy Friedman, a Californian, defended her pronunciation with “I live in New Spain, where we lasso words for desayuno.”) No doubt the Spanish influence also helps account for why Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills is “ro-day-o” rather than “ro-dee-o.” We don’t have that Spanish influence in Canada, so our pronunciation stays where it wandered off to.

But the word didn’t originally come from lazo. It originally came from Lazio. Well, that’s what they call the area around Rome now; back in the day, it was Latium, whence the name of the language, Latin. The Latin origin, by way of post-classical lacium, was laqueum. Which meant ‘noose’.

But that Latin word gave us something else, too. After the cowboys came home from a day out swinging lassos to catch their calves for branding – oh, yeah, that’s why they do it, you know, so I suppose that gives a bit more authority to Nancy Friedman, the branding expert (not that kind of branding, though) – they met their ladies, who might be dressed up all pretty in lace. And guess what: that lace that the ladies used to snare the cowboys comes from the same Latin root as lasso. (Now that ladies also lasso, the guys need to catch up with the lace. Though I don’t know if it will snare the ladies.)

*Yes, I know rustling is stealing. I’m making a funny.

Have you seen that lass, Sue?
That lass who lassoed you?
Lassoed you with her leather and her lace?
The lace that laced her bodice,
And, just ’cuz she was modest,
That lace that hid her pretty little face?

Oh, I’ve seen her, alright –
I saw her just last night,
After a hard day riding on the range.
I was lassoing and roping,
And came back really hoping,
But I found that she was acting kinda strange.

Oh, I hugged her and I kissed her,
And told her that I missed her,
And said I’d go and lasso up some chow,
But she said she’d be alright,
And then she said good night,
And that she felt real tired anyhow.

I said it was a loss,
And I was feeling kind of cross,
But then I heard a noise under the bed.
I looked and saw a man,
And said, “Come out if you can,”
And then I shot that rascal in the head.

So now I’m on the run –
Shoulda used my rope, not gun,
But hindsight, as they say, is no damn use.
The sheriff’s on my tail,
So I’d better hit the trail
’Fore lace and lasso lead me to a noose.

Ah, yep, the old west, where men rode hard with their lassos, and the lasses who lived in the towns snared them with their lace and their laces. But lasso and lace will always lead you to a noose. And that’s not some moralism: it’s etymology.

I won’t keep you in suspense. Lasso comes from Spanish lazo, which, like the word lace, comes from Old French laz, which comes (probably by way of an intermediate lacium) from Latin laqueum, which means “noose”. The connection? Well, it should be obvious enough for lasso, which is a kind of noose you throw. For lace, the kind that’s on your shoes came first, with its loops; the decorative kind with many tiny loops came after. So that rough-and-rugged cowboy tool and that soft feminine accoutrement both use words derived from a word for a rope loop – of the kind that can keep you in a most unpleasant suspense.

The shift from a “lass-oh” pronunciation to a “lass-oo” pronunciation came in the US. The British kept saying it the older way until well into the 20th century. Why did the American cowboys change it to “lass-oo“? Well, I don’t rightly know, but I am entertained by the (probably not accurate) notion that that way of saying it is more like the act of using one: the “lass” like the hissing sound it makes swinging near your ear, and the “oo” like throwing it – we know that that “oo” sound has a certain ballistic flavour, and putting the stress on it matches its being the main muscle thrust and the point of the action. Certainly the American way lends itself better to being shouted.

Also, the British way of saying it makes it identical to the last name of the Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso. And since, as we know, cowboys like to talk about Renassiance madrigals, there was a real risk of confusion.

Well, come on. We know they like poetry, anyway. Is it really such a stretch?