slap leather

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

slap leather (third-person singular simple present slaps leather, present participle slapping leather, simple past and past participle slapped leather)

1. (US, idiomatic) To make a quick motion to draw one's handgun from its holster, especially in a duel in the Old West.
   • 2001 August 17, Stephen Hunter, “'American Outlaws': The Young And the West-less”, in Washington Post, retrieved 7 July 2015:

     [T]he western . . . provides a ready armature for other dramas that have nothing to do with slapping leather, riding horseflesh or kissing purty gals.

   • 2010, “Movies: Destry (1954)”, in New York Times, retrieved 7 July 2015:

     Murphy plays Tom Destry, the peace-loving son of a notorious gunslinger. . . . Though he prefers to talk rather than slap leather, Destry manages to keep the bad guys at bay.

   • 2015 April 20, Kelly Bostian, “Quick-draw cowboys face off to find Oklahoma's fastest guns”, in Tulsa World, retrieved 7 July 2015:

     With .45s strapped to their sides, gunslingers—30 men, six women, even an 11-year-old kid—slogged through the mud in their cowboy boots to reach a dirt-caked boardwalk where, one after another, they slapped leather to see who would reign as Oklahoma’s fastest gun.

Synonyms

• fill one's hand

Further reading

• “slap leather”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.