buck

English Online Dictionary. What means buck‎? What does buck mean?

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bʌk/
• (Northern England) IPA^(key): /bʊk/
• Rhymes: -ʌk
• Homophone: book (without the foot-strut split)

Etymology 1

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.

Noun

buck (plural bucks)

1. A male deer, antelope, sheep, goat, rabbit, hare, and sometimes the male of other animals such as the hamster, ferret, shad and kangaroo.
2. (US) An uncastrated sheep, a ram.
3. (Africa) An antelope of either sex; compare with Afrikaans bok.
4. A young buck; an adventurous, impetuous, dashing, or high-spirited young man.
5. (British, obsolete) A fop or dandy.
6. (US, dated, derogatory) A black or Native American man.
   • 1979, Octavia Butler, Kindred:

     She got so she’d rather have a buck nigger than me!
7. (US, military slang, WWI–WWII) Lowest rank; a private.
8. A unit of a particular currency
   1. (US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, informal) A dollar (one hundred cents).
   2. (South Africa, informal) A rand (currency unit).
   3. (UK, slang, obsolete) A sixpence.

      three and a buck ― three shillings and sixpence

   4. (informal, rare) A euro.
   5. (by extension, Australia, South Africa, US, informal) Money.
   6. (finance) One million dollars.

      (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:)

9. (US, slang) One hundred.

10. Clipping of buckshot.

11. An implement the body of which is likened to a male sheep’s body due maintaining a stiff-legged position as if by stubbornness.
    1. (UK, dialect) The body of a post mill, particularly in East Anglia. See Wikipedia:Windmill machinery.
    2. A frame on which firewood is sawed; a sawhorse; a sawbuck.
    3. A leather-covered frame used for gymnastic vaulting.
    4. A wood or metal frame used by automotive customizers and restorers to assist in the shaping of sheet metal bodywork.
    5. (dated) 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.
       1. (by extension in the US, in certain metaphors or phrases) Blame; responsibility; scapegoating; finger-pointing.

12. (African-American Vernacular, dated, dance) Synonym of buck dance.
13. Synonym of mule (“type of cocktail with ginger ale etc.”)
14. (dated, slang) A kind of large marble in children's games.
15. (UK, obsolete, slang) An unlicensed cabman.

Synonyms

• (male deer): stag
• (male goat): billygoat, billy, buckling, buck-goat, he-goat
• (male ferret): hob, hob-ferret
• (ram): ram, tup
• (slang: dollar): bill, bone, clam, cucumber, dead president, greenback, note, one-spot, paper, simoleon, single, smackeroo
• (item that indicates dealer in poker): button, dealer button

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• doe, doeling, ewe, gill, jill, nanny, nanny-goat, she-goat

Verb

buck (third-person singular simple present bucks, present participle bucking, simple past and past participle bucked)

1. (intransitive) To copulate, as bucks and does.

Etymology 2

From dialectal buck ("to give in, yield"; also bug (“to bend”)), from Middle Low German bucken (“to bend”) or Middle Dutch bucken, bocken (“to bend”), intensive forms of Old Saxon būgan and Old Dutch *būgan (“to bend, bow”), both from Proto-West Germanic *beugan, from Proto-Germanic *būganą (“to bend”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰūgʰ- (“to bend”). Influenced in some senses by buck “male goat” (see above). Sense “to meet, to encounter” is a semantic loan from Jamaican Creole buck.

Compare bow and elbow.

Verb

buck (third-person singular simple present bucks, present participle bucking, simple past and past participle bucked)

1. (intransitive) To bend; buckle.
2. (intransitive, of a horse or similar saddle or pack animal) To leap upward arching its back, coming down with head low and forelegs stiff, forcefully kicking its hind legs upward, often in an attempt to dislodge or throw a rider or pack.
   • 1849, Jackey Jackey, The Statement of the Aboriginal Native Jackey Jackey, who Accompanied Mr. Kennedy, William Carron, Narrative of an Expedition Undertaken Under the Direction of the Late Mr. Assistant Surveyor E. B. Kennedy, 2004 Gutenberg Australia eBook #0201121,

     At the same time we got speared, the horses got speared too, and jumped and bucked all about, and got into the swamp.

3. (transitive, of a horse or similar saddle or pack animal) To throw (a rider or pack) by bucking.
4. (intransitive, by extension) To resist obstinately; oppose or object strongly.

5. (intransitive, by extension) To move or operate in a sharp, jerking, or uneven manner.

6. (transitive, by extension) To overcome or shed (e.g., an impediment or expectation), in pursuit of a goal; to force a way through despite (an obstacle); to resist or proceed against.
   • 1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure

     [I] Asked if he wanted to go to a punk rock concert Saturday & he had another engagement but he would buck it because it sure sounded much more fun going with me.

7. (transitive, military) To subject to a mode of punishment which consists of tying the wrists together, passing the arms over the bent knees, and putting a stick across the arms and in the angle formed by the knees.
8. (US, military slang) To strive or aspire e.g. to a promotion.
9. (riveting) To press a reinforcing device (bucking bar) against (the force of a rivet) in order to absorb vibration and increase expansion.
10. (forestry) To saw a felled tree into shorter lengths, as for firewood.
11. (electronics) To output a voltage that is lower than the input voltage.
12. (chiefly Ireland, humorous or euphemistic) To fuck.
13. (MLE) To meet, to encounter, to come across.

Derived terms

Related terms

• buxom

Translations

Etymology 3

See beech.

Noun

buck (plural bucks)

1. (Scotland) The beech tree.

Derived terms

• buckwheat, buckmast, buck-mast

Etymology 4

From Middle English bouken (“steep in lye”), ultimately related to the root of beech. Cognate with Middle High German büchen, Swedish byka, Danish byge and Low German būken.

Noun

buck

1. Lye or suds in which cloth is soaked in the operation of bleaching, or in which clothes are washed.
   • 1673, Robert Almond, The English Horseman and Complete Farrier, London: Simon Miller, Chapter 25 “Maunginess in the Main,” p. 236,^[10]

     […] when you find the scurf to fall off, wash the Neck and other parts with Buck Lye made blood warm.

2. The cloth or clothes soaked or washed.

Derived terms

• buck-basket

Verb

buck (third-person singular simple present bucks, present participle bucking, simple past and past participle bucked)

2. To soak, steep or boil in lye or suds, as part of the bleaching process.
3. To wash (clothes) in lye or suds, or, in later usage, by beating them on stones in running water.
4. (mining) To break up or pulverize, as ores.

Etymology 5

From Middle English bouk (“belly, trunk, body, hull of a ship, fishtrap, container”), from Old English būc (“belly, bottle, jug, pitcher”), from Proto-West Germanic *būk, from Proto-Germanic *būkaz. Doublet of bucket.

Alternative forms

• bouk

Noun

buck (plural bucks)

1. (UK, dialectal) The body of a cart or waggon, especially the front part.
2. (UK, dialectal, anatomy) Belly, breast, chest.
3. (UK, dialectal) Size.

Derived terms

• eelbuck
• forebuck

Verb

buck (third-person singular simple present bucks, present participle bucking, simple past and past participle bucked)

1. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To swell out.

Etymology 6

From Hindi बकना (baknā, “babble, talk nonsense”).

Verb

buck (third-person singular simple present bucks, present participle bucking, simple past and past participle bucked)

1. (intransitive, archaic, slang) To boast or brag.
   • 1880, Ali Baba (page 164)

     And then […] he bucks with a quiet stubborn determination that would fill an American editor, or an Under Secretary of State with despair. He belongs to the 12-foot-tiger school, so perhaps he can't help it.

References

• Henry Yule, A[rthur] C[oke] Burnell (1903) “buck”, in William Crooke, editor, Hobson-Jobson […] , London: John Murray, […].

See also

• buck hoist (different etymology)

References

See also

• buck buck

Jamaican Creole

Verb

buck

1. (usually followed by up pon) To bump; To bump into; To encounter
2. To fuck.