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Ready to spark something? Download the Sims 4 and play for free. Welcome to another mini-cast from Away With Words. I'm Martha Barnett.

Maverick. Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick Maverick is it just my

imagination or are we hearing this word a whole lot more lately it applies of course to a politician who's staunchly

independent and stubbornly non-conformist. So where'd we get an odd word like

that anyway? Well the answer involves a Texas political dynasty that added not one but two familiar words to English.

Samuel Augustus Maverick was a 19th century Texas lawyer who became a politician. He was elected

mayor of San Antonio in 1839 and later served in the Texas state legislature. He also speculated in land deals and he owned cattle which he kept on a

385,000 acre ranch. In those days cattlemen didn't always fence in their land, which meant that their animals often roamed free.

So ranchers would bran their cattle to prevent theft and to resolve any disputes over ownership.

Well, all the ranchers that is except for Samuel Maverick.

Maverick was notorious for refusing to brand his own livestock. So whenever his neighbors saw an animal without a

brand, especially a calf that had strayed from its mother, they'd say things like,

oh well that must be a Maverick.

Maverick told people that he considered branding cruelty to animals.

Skeptics, though, charged that by refusing to brand those animals,

Maverick could then lay claim to any unbranded cattle as his own.

Over the years, Maverick became a general term for a stray unmarked calf, and later it came to apply to any kind of non-conformist particularly

a politician not branded by special interests.

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