buck
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /bʌk/
ipa: /bʊk/
note: Dublin
ipa: /bʊk/
rhymes: -ʌk
homophone: book (without the foot-strut split)
Forms: form: bucks
Etymology: From Middle English bukke, bucke, buc, from Old English buc, bucc, bucca (“he-goat, stag”), from Proto-West Germanic *bukk, *bukkō, from Proto-Germanic *bukkaz, *bukkô (“buck”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuǵ- (“ram”). Doublet of puck (“billy goat”).
Currency-related senses hail from American English, a clipping of buckskin as a unit of trade among Indians and Europeans in frontier days (attested from 1748).
The idea of rigidly standing implements is instilled by Dutch bok (“sawhorse”) as in zaagbok (“sawbuck”).
The sense of an object indicating someone’s turn then occurred in American English, possibly originating from the game poker, where a knife (typically with a hilt made from a stag horn) was used as a place-marker to signify whose turn it was to deal. The place-marker was commonly referred to as a buck, which reinforced the term “pass the buck” used in poker, and eventually a silver dollar was used in place of a knife, which also led to a dollar being referred to as a buck.
Senses: glosses: A male deer, antelope, sheep, goat, rabbit, hare, and sometimes the male of other animals such as the hamster, ferret, shad and kangaroo.
glosses: An uncastrated sheep, a ram.
examples: text: There are all kinds of game in the valley, and you are unlucky if you do not see a giraffe or an ostrich, or at least a herd of buck.
ref: 1950 April, Timothy H. Cobb, “The Kenya-Uganda Railway”, in Railway Magazine, pages 265-266:
glosses: An antelope of either sex; compare with Afrikaans bok.
examples: text: Swankey of the Body Guard himself, that dangerous youth, and the greatest buck of all the Indian army now on leave, was one day discovered by Major Dobbin tête-à-tête with Amelia, and describing the sport of pig-sticking to her with great humour and eloquence […]
ref: 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 60, in Vanity Fair:
glosses: A young buck; an adventurous, impetuous, dashing, or high-spirited young man.
examples: text: This pusillanimous creature thinks himself, and would be thought, a buck.
ref: 1808, Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Connoisseur: The British Essayists, volume 32, page 93:
text: The Captain was then a buck and dandy, during the reign of those two successive dynasties, of the first rank of the second order ; the characteristic of which very respectable rank of fashionables I hold to be, that their spurs impinge upon the pavement oftener than upon the sides of a horse.
ref: 1825, Constantine Henry Phipps, I Zingari: The English in Italy, volume II, page 153:
synonyms: word: macaroni
word: popinjay
word: barbermonger
word: beau
word: blade
word: blood
word: buck
word: carpet knight
word: cockscomb
word: dandy
word: dike
word: dood
word: dude
word: dudelet
word: exquisite
word: fashionable
word: fast man
word: fine gentleman
word: fop
word: foretop
word: fribble
word: gallant
word: go
word: jack-a-dandy
word: Jemmy-Jessamy
word: jetter
word: macaroni
word: masher
word: metrosexual
word: mignon
word: petit maître
word: popinjay
word: pretty boy
word: prig
word: puss-gentleman
word: smart
word: spark
word: spiff
word: swell
word: tippy
word: toff
glosses: A fop or dandy.
examples: text: But this buck claimed he was a big war chief with the Nawyecky Comanches.
ref: 1956, Frank S. Nugent, Alan Le May, The Searchers, spoken by Futterman:
text: She got so she’d rather have a buck nigger than me!
ref: 1979, Octavia Butler, Kindred:
text: Her curly red hair loose from its combs hangin' down her back and her freckled skin bare, and a big ole nigger buck was doin' things to her! He'd always known that Hootch Carter raped and killed Becky Nell, never had reason to doubt it.
ref: 2009, Carol C. Morgan, Wind in the Cotton Fields, page 460:
glosses: A black or Native American man.
topics: government
military
politics
war
glosses: Lowest rank; a private.
examples: text: Can I borrow five bucks?
text: Won't yer give Jake ten bucks ter buy hisself some close, so he look nice 'mong de gemmens?
ref: 1873, John Morris, Wanderings of a Vagabond:
glosses: A unit of a particular currency
A dollar (one hundred cents).
synonyms: bill
bone
buckaroo
clam
cucumber
dead president
greenback
note
one-spot
paper
simoleon
single
smackeroo
glosses: A unit of a particular currency
A rand (currency unit).
examples: text: three and a buck
translation: three shillings and sixpence
english: three shillings and sixpence
glosses: A unit of a particular currency
A sixpence.
examples: text: Those fools are all probably sitting outside the pork store, recalling the incident about losing a thousand bucks with the fake Gajas, and chewing on their soggy stogies.
ref: 2010 December 14, Robert Hernandez, Slurp:Killer Wine, page 129:
glosses: A unit of a particular currency
A euro.
examples: text: Corporations will do anything to make a buck.
text: It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.
ref: 1987, Oliver Stone, Wall Street (motion picture), spoken by Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas):
glosses: A unit of a particular currency
Money.
topics: business
finance
glosses: A unit of a particular currency
One million dollars.
examples: text: The police caught me driving a buck forty [140 miles per hour] on the freeway.
text: That skinny guy? C’mon, he can’t weigh more than a buck and a quarter [125 pounds].
glosses: One hundred.
examples: text: He loaded the shotgun with two rounds of double-ought buck.
glosses: Clipping of buckshot.
glosses: An implement the body of which is likened to a male sheep’s body due maintaining a stiff-legged position as if by stubbornness.
The body of a post mill, particularly in East Anglia. See Wikipedia:Windmill machinery.
glosses: An implement the body of which is likened to a male sheep’s body due maintaining a stiff-legged position as if by stubbornness.
A frame on which firewood is sawed; a sawhorse; a sawbuck.
glosses: An implement the body of which is likened to a male sheep’s body due maintaining a stiff-legged position as if by stubbornness.
A leather-covered frame used for gymnastic vaulting.
examples: text: Plans in hand, Frank first paid his friend Raniero a visit, and the artisan quickly went to work on a fortified wood buck that would serve as a form for the Griffith 600 Series, as the car was formally known and marketed by Griffith Motors.
ref: 2010, Andrew McCredie, Paula Reisner, Intermeccanica: The Story of the Prancing Bull, page 58:
glosses: An implement the body of which is likened to a male sheep’s body due maintaining a stiff-legged position as if by stubbornness.
A wood or metal frame used by automotive customizers and restorers to assist in the shaping of sheet metal bodywork.
glosses: An implement the body of which is likened to a male sheep’s body due maintaining a stiff-legged position as if by stubbornness.
An object of various types, placed on a table to indicate turn or status; such as a brass object, placed in rotation on a US Navy wardroom dining table to indicate which officer is to be served first, or an item passed around a poker table indicating the dealer or placed in the pot to remind the winner of some privilege or obligation when his or her turn to deal next comes.
examples: text: pass the buck
text: the buck stops here
glosses: An implement the body of which is likened to a male sheep’s body due maintaining a stiff-legged position as if by stubbornness.
An object of various types, placed on a table to indicate turn or status; such as a brass object, placed in rotation on a US Navy wardroom dining table to indicate which officer is to be served first, or an item passed around a poker table indicating the dealer or placed in the pot to remind the winner of some privilege or obligation when his or her turn to deal next comes.
Blame; responsibility; scapegoating; finger-pointing.
raw_tags: in certain metaphors or phrases
in the US
topics: dance
dancing
hobbies
lifestyle
sports
qualifier: African-American Vernacular
glosses: Synonym of buck dance.
synonyms: word: buck dance
glosses: Synonym of mule (“type of cocktail with ginger ale etc.”).
synonyms: word: mule
extra: (“type of cocktail with ginger ale etc.”).
glosses: A kind of large marble in children's games.
glosses: An unlicensed cabman.
Synonyms: sense: male deer
word: stag
sense: male goat
word: billygoat
sense: male goat
word: billy
sense: male goat
word: buckling
sense: male goat
word: buck-goat
sense: male goat
word: he-goat
sense: male ferret
word: hob
sense: male ferret
word: hob-ferret
sense: ram
word: ram
sense: ram
word: tup
sense: item that indicates dealer in poker
word: button
sense: item that indicates dealer in poker
word: dealer button
Derived terms: a buck's a buck
bang for one's buck
bang for the buck
Biden bucks
big bucks
blackbuck
break the buck
buck ague
buck-and-wing
buckberry
buckboard
buck breaking
buckbrush
buck converter
buckeen
buck-eyed
buck fence
buck fever
buck fifty
buck general
buckhorn
buckhound
buckish
buckism
buckjumper
buckjumping
buck moon
buck naked
bucko
buck private
buck rabbit
buckraker
buckraking
buckram
buck rarebit
bucksaw
buckshot
buckskin
buck slip
bucksome
bucksow
buck spinifex
buckstall
buckstay
bucktail
buckthorn
bucktooth
buck-toothed
bucktoothed
buck-wagon
buck wild
bushbuck
close with a buck
crossbuck
dollarbuck
fast buck
gigabuck
hearty as a buck
keep it a buck
keep it a buck fifty
killbuck
kilobuck
like a million bucks
marsh buck
megabuck
pass the buck
buck-passing
the buck stops here
buck-passer
prongbuck
quick buck
Ralph bucks
ravine-buck
reedbuck
roebuck
sawbuck
terabuck
toodlum buck
young buck
Related terms: doe
doeling
ewe
gill
jill
nanny
nanny-goat
she-goat