the.com/maverick
The unbranded calf that grew up to brand everyone else's thinking.
means A person who thinks and acts independently, refusing to follow the herd or toe the party line.
from From Samuel Maverick, a 19th-century Texas lawyer and cattle rancher who, the story goes, didn't bother branding his calves. When his unmarked cattle wandered the range, other ranchers started calling any stray, unbranded calf a 'maverick' after him. The word roamed from literal cattle to figurative people by the late 1800s, coming to mean anyone who, like those calves, carried no one else's mark — independent, unaffiliated, hard to pin down.
- origin
- named after rancher who refused to brand his cattle
- irony
- the man was lazy, not rebellious
- usage shift
- laziness rebranded as independence by history
- political reuse
- became shorthand for politicians defying their own party