Trinka Hakes Noble

"Meanwhile, back at the ranch..." is a catch phrase that appears in a variety of contexts. For example, it may be employed by narrators of American cowboy movies and TV shows to indicate a segue from one scene to another. The expression may have originated as a stock intertitle in the silent movies and at first the reference to the ranch was literal, but this may be apocryphal as no known film actually has this intertitle. Later, as the phrase became a cliché, it was used more and more loosely and with a growing sense of mockery or levity, often with a vague focus. In this manifestation the phrase came into common use in unrelated contexts.