buck – English noun declension

English noun forms of buck

Noun: buck
Singularbuck
Pluralbucks

Sample Sentences

  • 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:]
  • 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:]
  • 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:]
  • As we crossed Blackwell's Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl. [1925, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 83:]
  • But this buck claimed he was a big war chief with the Nawyecky Comanches. [1956, Frank S. Nugent, Alan Le May, The Searchers, spoken by Futterman:]
  • 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:]
  • ‘A couple of Old Men wanted that young lubra and they’ve spurred on the bucks to chase Possum and cut his liver out.’ [1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 44:]
  • Can I borrow five bucks?
  • 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:]
  • three and a buck (three shillings and sixpence)
  • 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:]
  • Corporations will do anything to make a buck.
  • It's all about bucks, kid. The rest is conversation. [1987, Oliver Stone, Wall Street (motion picture), spoken by Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas):]
  • The police caught me driving a buck forty [140 miles per hour] on the freeway.
  • That skinny guy? C’mon, he can’t weigh more than a buck and a quarter [125 pounds].
  • He loaded the shotgun with two rounds of double-ought buck.
  • 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:]
  • pass the buck
  • the buck stops here

Etymology

1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *bʰuǵ-der.
3. Proto-Indo-European *bʰuǵ-ko-s
4. Proto-Germanic *bukkaz
5. Proto-Germanic *bukkô
6. Proto-West Germanic *bukkō
7. Old English bucca
8. Middle English bukke
9. English buck
10. Inherited from Middle English bukke. Doublet of puck (“billy goat”).
11. 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).
12. The idea of rigidly standing implements is instilled by Dutch bok (“sawhorse”) as in zaagbok (“sawbuck”).
13. 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.

Verbs referencing "buck"

English Nouns butcher, German Nouns Bock, Norwegian Bokmål Nouns bukk, Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns bukk.