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Added 9 October 2026

buck

/ˈbʌk/ noun

noun Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). Pronunciation from Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org. More about buck at Wordnik → Where our words come from →

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.
An uncastrated sheep, a ram.
An antelope of either sex; compare with Afrikaans bok.

verb

To copulate, as bucks and does.

verb

To bend; buckle.
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.
To throw (a rider or pack) by bucking.

noun

The beech tree.

Origin

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.

From Wiktionary, via Kaikki.org (CC BY-SA)

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