buck
/ˈbʌk/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms bucks bucking bucked bouk Bucke Book
- noun A male deer, antelope, sheep, goat, rabbit, hare, and sometimes the male of other animals such as the hamster, ferret, salmonid, shad, skunk and kangaroo.
- noun (US) An uncastrated sheep, a ram.
- noun (Africa) An antelope of either sex; compare with Afrikaans bok.
- noun The sound made by a chicken.
- noun A young buck; an adventurous, impetuous, dashing, or high-spirited young man.
- noun (UK, obsolete) A fop or dandy.
- noun (US, dated, derogatory) A black or Native American man.
- noun (Australia, derogatory, obsolete) An Aboriginal man.
- verb (intransitive) To copulate, as bucks and does.
- verb (intransitive) To bend; buckle.
- verb (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.
- verb (transitive, of a horse or similar saddle or pack animal) To throw (a rider or pack) by bucking.
- verb (intransitive, by extension) To resist obstinately; oppose or object strongly. “The vice president bucked at the board’s latest solution.”
- verb (intransitive, by extension) To move or operate in a sharp, jerking, or uneven manner. “The motor bucked and sputtered before dying completely.”
- verb (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. “The plane bucked a strong headwind.”
- verb (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.
- verb (US, military slang) To strive or aspire e.g. to a promotion.
- noun (Scotland) The beech tree.
- noun Lye or suds in which cloth is soaked in the operation of bleaching, or in which clothes are washed.
- noun The cloth or clothes soaked or washed.
Synonyms
stag billygoat billy buckling buck-goat he-goat hob hob-ferret ram tup macaroni popinjay barbermonger beau blade blood carpet knight cockscomb dandy dike vaulting horse long horse dollar dollar bill one dollar bill clam Pearl Buck Pearl Sydenstricker Buck sawhorse horse
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English bukke. Doublet of puck (“billy goat”).
Currency-related senses hail from American English, a clipping of buckskin as a unit of trade among Native Americans 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.
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”), ultimately from Proto-West Germanic *bukkōn (“to bend, bend repeatedly”), from Proto-Germanic *bukkōną (“to bend”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰugʰ-, *bʰewgʰ- (“to bend”) + Proto-Germanic *-(u)kōną. Cognate with Old Frisian bukkia (“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.
See beech.
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.
Webster’s 1913
- noun Lye or suds in which cloth is soaked in the operation of bleaching, or in which clothes are washed.
- noun The cloth or clothes soaked or washed. [Obs.] Shak.
- verb To soak, steep, or boil, in lye or suds; --a process in bleaching.
- verb To wash (clothes) in lye or suds, or, in later usage, by beating them on stones in running water.
Etymology [Akin to LG. büke, Dan. byg, Sw. byk, G. bauche: cf. It. bucato, Prov. Sp. bugada, F. buée.]
Etymology [OE. bouken; akin to LG. büken, Dan. byge, Sw. byka, G. bauchen, beuchen; cf. OF. buer. Cf. the preceding noun.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “buck”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details