There’s a line in the thinking-man’s action flick, Tears of the Sun, where Bruce Willis’s character tells Sammi Rotibi’s Arthur Azuka to “…cowboy the f* up…”
I’ve wondered what that meant. As someone who’s studied the American special ops community since middle school, I thought I had something of a grasp on most of the lingo used, but this one was new to me. A Google search revealed that the term “cowboy up” comes from the rodeo circuit (and recently co-opted by the Boston Red Sox, who will use anything in their repeated pathetic attempts to beat the Yankees).
semantics etc.
Slang City
Contra Costa Times