Definition of "buck"

buck¹

/bʌk/

noun
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.
  Quotations
  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.
  1950 April, Timothy H. Cobb, “The Kenya-Uganda Railway”, in Railway Magazine, pages 265-266
4. A young buck; an adventurous, impetuous, dashing, or high-spirited young man.
  Quotations
  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 […]
  1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 60, in Vanity Fair
5. (Britain, obsolete) A fop or dandy.
  Quotations
  This pusillanimous creature thinks himself, and would be thought, a buck.
  1808, Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Connoisseur: The British Essayists, volume 32, page 93
  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.
  1825, Constantine Henry Phipps, I Zingari: The English in Italy, volume II, page 153
6. (US, dated, derogatory) A black or Native American man.
  Quotations
  She got so she'd rather have a buck nigger than me!
  1979, Octavia Butler, Kindred
  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.
  2009, Carol C. Morgan, Wind in the Cotton Fields, page 460
7. A unit of a particular currency
  1. (US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, informal) A dollar (one hundred cents).
    Quotations
    Won't yer give Jake ten bucks ter buy hisself some close, so he look nice 'mong de gemmens?
    1873, John Morris, Wanderings of a Vagabond
  2. (South Africa, informal) A rand (currency unit).
  3. (UK, slang, obsolete) A sixpence.
  4. (informal, rare) A euro.
    Quotations
    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.
    2010 December 14, Robert Hernandez, Slurp:Killer Wine‎, page 129
  5. (by extension, Australia, South Africa, US, informal) Money.
    Quotations
    It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation.
    1987, Oliver Stone, Wall Street (motion picture), spoken by Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas)
  6. (finance) One million dollars.
8. (US, slang) One hundred.
9. Clipping of buckshot.
10. 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.
    Quotations
    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.
    2010, Andrew McCredie, Paula Reisner, Intermeccanica: The Story of the Prancing Bull, page 58
  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.
    (by extension in the US, in certain metaphors or phrases) Blame; responsibility; scapegoating; finger-pointing.
11. (African-American Vernacular, dated, dance) Synonym of buck dance.
12. Synonym of mule (“type of cocktail with ginger ale etc.”)
13. (dated, slang) A kind of large marble in children's games.
verb
third-person singular simple present bucks, present participle bucking, simple past and past participle bucked
1. (intransitive) To copulate, as bucks and does.

buck²

/bʌk/

verb
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.
  Quotations
  At the same time we got speared, the horses got speared too, and jumped and bucked all about, and got into the swamp.
  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
3. (transitive, of a horse or similar saddle or pack animal) To throw (a rider or pack) by bucking.
  Quotations
  The brute that he was riding had nearly bucked him out of the saddle.
  1886, W. E. Norris, A Bachelor's Blunder
4. (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.
5. (intransitive, by extension) To resist obstinately; oppose or object strongly.
6. (intransitive, by extension) To move or operate in a sharp, jerking, or uneven manner.
7. (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.
  Quotations
  I spoke to him in London recently and suggested he was bucking an age-old system. Surely popular performers studied the possible reactions of their audience in advance when deciding on a new approach?
  1977 November 20, Dave Gelly, “No more Ziggy as David Bowie becomes his own man”, in The Observer‎
  [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.
  1977-1980, Lou Sullivan, personal diary, quoted in 2019, Ellis Martin, Zach Ozma (editors), We Both Laughed In Pleasure
8. (riveting) To press a reinforcing device (bucking bar) against (the force of a rivet) in order to absorb vibration and increase expansion.
9. (forestry) To saw a felled tree into shorter lengths, as for firewood.
10. (electronics) To output a voltage that is lower than the input voltage.
11. (chiefly Ireland, humorous or euphemistic) To fuck.
  Quotations
  Well he yoked the ass up to the cart. And then the holy ructions it did start. Well he bucked it in the air and he bucked it all around. Till he smashed the buckin' cart upon the ground.
  1997 February 20, “Mickey's buckin' ass”‎performed by Richie Kavanagh
  Thatch had come down the stairs and chimed in: "Isn't he an awful buckin' eejit?"
  2003, Sam Stewart, The Druid‎, page 195
  "Was he a buccaneer?" I asked. "No, eejit!" Lionel said. Never one to pass up a play on words, he continued, "He's a buckin' IRA man and he's gathering up an army in the Irish Free State. He says he's going to march up to Ulster and drive all of us Protestants into the Irish Sea!"
  2010, The Other Belfast‎, page 155
  "I can see the headlines in the morning, taxi man bucking hangs himself.
  2012 January 28, 20:01 from the start, in Mrs Brown's Boys (Mammy's Going) (2), episode 5, spoken by Agnes Brown (Brendan O'Carroll)
  I will buck a French lad, Erin. I will buck a French lad, so help me God.
  2018 January 11, 13:39 from the start, in Derry Girls (1), episode 2, spoken by Michelle Mallon (Jamie-Lee O'Donnell)
  Protestors chanted "You're not wanted here" and held up placards with slogans such as "Buck off" - a pun on Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck's name - and "No to racist Ricketts".
  2022 April 2, Emma Smith, “Watch: 'Buck off!' - Chelsea fans stage 'No to racist Ricketts' ownership protest outside Stamford Bridge”, in goal.com‎

buck³

/bʌk/

noun
plural bucks
1. (Scotland) The beech tree.
  Quotations
  There is in it also woodes of buck, and deir in them.
  1777, Mostyn John Armstrong, A Scotch Atlas; Or Description of the Kingdom of Scotland
  But, whilst we thus condemn the timber, we must not omit to praise the mast, which fats our swine and deer, and hath, in some families, even supported men with bread. Chios endured a memorable siege by the beniefit of this mast. And, in some parts of France, they now grind the buck in mills; it affords a sweet oil, which the poor people east most willingly.
  1786, John Evelyn, Alexander Hunter, Silva: Or, A Discourse Of Forest-Trees, page 136
  The HORNBEAM ( provincially “HORSE-BEECH," in contradistinction to “buck beech” — the true beech) is, in many woods, the most prevalent species; and being drawn up in thickets with a rapid growth, becomes tall and straight enough for hop poles: and is even suffered to grow up, as a species of wood timber.
  1798, William Marshall, The Rural Economy of the Southern Counties
  The magnolia, buck [ beech?], and poplar never grow on lands subject to overflow.
  1969, Samuel Henry Lockett, Lauren C. Post, Louisiana as it is, page 53
  The underbrush is all there, spice brush, buck beech, iron wood and alder and no doubt in the spring of the year, there is a wealth of flowers.
  2010, Joel Greenberg, Of Prairie, Woods, and Water

buck⁴

/bʌk/

noun
1. Lye or suds in which cloth is soaked in the operation of bleaching, or in which clothes are washed.
  Quotations
  […] when you find the scurf to fall off, wash the Neck and other parts with Buck Lye made blood warm.
  1673, Robert Almond, The English Horseman and Complete Farrier, London: Simon Miller, Chapter 25 “Maunginess in the Main,” p. 236
2. The cloth or clothes soaked or washed.
  Quotations
  Buck! I would I could wash myself of the buck!
  c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act III, scene iii]
verb
third-person singular simple present bucks, present participle bucking, simple past and past participle bucked
1. To soak, steep or boil in lye or suds, as part of the bleaching process.
2. To wash (clothes) in lye or suds, or, in later usage, by beating them on stones in running water.
3. (mining) To break up or pulverize, as ores.
  Quotations
  This [ore mixture] was bucked or cobbed down to a 'peasy' size (i.e. the size of a pea) or less, using a flat-bottomed bucking hammer, and then riddled into coarse peasy and finer (sand-sized) 'smitham' grades.
  1991, Joan Day, R. F. Tylecote, The industrial revolution in metals, page 89

buck⁵

/bʌk/

noun
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.
verb
third-person singular simple present bucks, present participle bucking, simple past and past participle bucked
1. (UK, dialectal, intransitive) To swell out.

Definition of "buck"

buck1

noun

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

verb

buck2

verb

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

buck3

noun

Quotations

buck4

noun

Quotations

Quotations

verb

Quotations

buck5

noun

verb

buck¹

buck²

buck³

buck⁴

buck⁵