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A Yellowstone Glossary: How to Talk Like the Dutton Ranch Cowboys
Barrel racers, bunkhouses, and chuckwagons. Learn the lingo of Yellowstone.
Whether you're gearing up for your first binge of Yellowstone, or need to brush up on the lingo before your next rewatch, we've got you covered with the definitive Yellowstone glossary.
What is Yellowstone about?
Written by Taylor Sheridan (Hell or High Water, Sicario), Yellowstone follows the violent world of the Duttons, a ranching family in Montana. Between shifting alliances, family in-fighting, and constant clashes with local government, land developers, and an Indian reservation, John Dutton has his hands full controlling the largest contiguous ranch in the U.S.
Talk like a Dutton with our Yellowstone glossary:
Barrel racers: Competitors in a rodeo event that involves horse and rider running around preset barrels in a cloverleaf pattern. Given the speed at which this is executed, the barrel racers who frequent the bunkhouse have a reputation for being wild and reckless.
The brand: Every ranch brands its cattle with a unique insignia, but John Dutton takes this a step further by branding the flesh of ranch hands with criminal pasts who’ve traded their freedom for a lifetime of service to Yellowstone Dutton Ranch.
Buckle bunnies: Female fans of buckle-winning rodeo cowboys.
Bunkhouse: Where the Yellowstone cowboys sleep and engage in debauchery.
Cattle rustling: Stealing livestock, usually cows, from farms or ranches. This was more common before fenced grazing became the norm.
Chuckwagon: A covered horse-drawn buggy that serves as a mobile kitchen.
Cowboying: According to series creator Taylor Sheridan’s character Travis Wheatley, cowboying is "you and a horse doing a job, trying like hell not to let the other down.”
Dips**t: Rip’s favorite insult.
No hats on the bed: An old superstition that putting a cowboy hat on a bed could invite bad luck or even foretell of critical injury or death. Rookie ranch hand Jimmy Hurdstram is known for his bad luck and clumsiness, so the bunkhouse erupts when he unknowingly invokes the curse.
Sum b***h: Traditional Texas “son of a b***h stew” that Teeter made of “literally everything from the cow that nobody else wants” — eyeballs included.
Spooked: Frightened; usually used to describe a startled horse.
Tornado: Beth Dutton.
Trailer park: Anybody who stands in her way.
The train station: A canyon on the Montana-Wyoming border where the Duttons dump the bodies of their enemies — a jurisdictional twilight zone that Lloyd says exists in “a county with no people, no sheriff, and no 12 jurors of your peers."
Stream all five seasons of Yellowstone now on Peacock.
