It's Not A Ranch

George W. Bush does not live on a ranch the last time I checked. There is no livestock there. No sheep, no cattle, no bison, no emu. The only thing he seems to tend to on his plot of land is brush. And what does he do with the trees providing the oxygen we breathe? Cut them down. Nice.

Ranch:

is a term in real estate used to describe a large piece of land that is used for ranching. Ranches can run in size from a few acres to more than 500,000 acres (2,000 km²).

Ranching:

is the raising of cattle or sheep on rangeland, although one might also speak of ranching with regard to less common livestock such as elk, bison or emu. The word applies in the western United States, in Canada, Latin America and South America. (Australian usage would refer to ranches as "stations"; New Zealanders use the term "runs".)

To anyone out there, please stop calling his patch of land a ranch. He lives in a big house. The closest thing to a ranch W's plot of land qualifies as being is a Dude Ranch.

Dude Ranch:

a type of ranch oriented towards visitors or tourism. It is a phenomenon of the romanticization of the American West after the official closing of the United States frontier in the late 19th century. The Western adventures of hardy aristocrats like Theodore Roosevelt were made available to paying guests from cities or the East, called "tenderfeet" or "dudes" in the West.

Comments

[Scott]

Not to be difficult, but the granddaddy of all dictionaries, the Oxford English Dictionary, lists the first meaning of ranch to be:

1. a. A hut or house in the country.

So, I suppose it is a ranch. :)

[albert]

In the US, a 'ranch' implies a place where people live and raise things like cattle. And a hut or house in the contry in 1808 [the OED's oldest source for the word] would sure as hell be raising its own cattle.

[Scott]

I would agree that the President is calling his home a 'ranch' with the image of the cowboys and what have you, but I still think that technically it is a ranch.

But I am often accused of being too literal.