Meaning & use
bronco
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Meanings
nouncountableAmerican
A horse from the American West that is untrained or hard to control and tends to buck.
Grammar: Takes an article: a bronco, two broncos.
Patterns
- ride a bronco
- a wild bronco
The cowboy held on while the bronco kicked and bucked.
A wild bronco galloped across the plains.
Ranchers often broke broncos before selling them.
nouncountablesport
A rodeo event in which a rider tries to stay on a bucking horse, or the horse used for it.
Grammar: Often used as a modifier: bronco riding.
Patterns
- bronco riding
- bronco rider
The crowd cheered as the bronco rider lasted eight seconds.
She competes in bronco riding at the county fair.
Word forms
| plural | broncos |
|---|
Common combinations
- ride a bronco
- He learned to ride a bronco on his uncle's ranch.
- bronco riding
- Bronco riding is a popular rodeo event.
- wild bronco
- A wild bronco bolted from the corral.
- break a bronco
- It took weeks to break the bronco.
- bucking bronco
- The bucking bronco threw its rider.
Synonyms and how they differ
- mustang
- Mustang names the wild feral horse of the American plains, while bronco emphasizes the bucking, untamed nature.
- wild horse
- Wild horse is a general phrase, with no rodeo or Western flavor.
- colt
- Colt means a young male horse, regardless of temperament.
Opposites
Word family
- broncobuster noun
- a cowboy who tames wild horses
- bronc noun
- a short, informal form of bronco
Commonly confused: bronco or bronchi?
bronco vs bronchi
Bronchi are the air tubes in the lungs; it only looks similar to bronco.
Practice
At the rodeo, the rider's goal was to stay on the bucking ___ for eight seconds.
Choose one answer.
A bronco is the untamed, bucking horse used in rodeo events. The other animals do not carry that specific association.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “bronco”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.