canteen cowboy

canteen cowboy noun: an aviator who spends his time flirting with or picking up girls at the canteen.

Noun

canteen cowboy (plural canteen cowboys)

(slang) An aviator who spends his time flirting with or picking up girls at the canteen.
- On the basis that if you cannot beat them, join them, some, like Private 'Umbriago' Hillier, who was later to prove his guts and character, emulated all the traits of the seasoned veteran. He earned the reputation of being 'a canteen cowboy' and a 'tailboard Romeo', always chatting up the girls at...1979, Ron Kent, First In!: Parachute Pathfinder Company, page 79
- No stiff upper lips, no coal-scuttle jaws, in fact none of the cliches. What the Boultings earlier Desert Victory did for the front line here, this film does for the canteen cowboy and the Whitehall warrior.1984, Geoff Hurd, National fictions: World War Two in British films and television, page 40

The Cockney had been thrown out of SAS because he was a loner and a canteen cowboy.1985, J. C. Winters, Berlin Fugle, page 307:
To my shame, I've been as guilty of macho bollocks in this regard as the dustiest canteen cowboy.1998, Robert Newman, Manners, page 71:

plural	canteen cowboys

What does canteen cowboy mean?: Canteen cowboy means an aviator who spends his time flirting with or picking up girls at the canteen.
How do you use canteen cowboy in a sentence?: The Cockney had been thrown out of SAS because he was a loner and a canteen cowboy.
What part of speech is canteen cowboy?: Canteen cowboy is a noun.
What is the plural of canteen cowboy?: The plural of canteen cowboy is canteen cowboys.

Adapted from Wiktionary: canteen cowboy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “canteen cowboy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/canteen_cowboy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.