Source etymology 1 · variant 1/2
Original entry ↗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. · The sound made by a chicken.
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰuǵ- Proto-Germanic *bukkaz Proto-Germanic *bukkô Proto-West Germanic *bukkō Old English bucca Middle English bukke English buck 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.
Relationships mentioned by the source
These are extracted mentions, not a timeline or a verified sequence of immediate parents.
This page abbreviates 23 auxiliary source items. The etymology narrative is not shortened. Omission counts are available in the audit fields below; consult the original for complete auxiliary material.
Inspect preserved source fields
Raw extraction fields are retained for auditing. Their order does not establish ancestry.
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},
{
"name": "doublet",
"args": {
"1": "en",
"2": "puck",
"t1": "billy goat"
},
"expansion": "Doublet of puck (“billy goat”)"
},
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"nocap": "1"
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},
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"2": "nl",
"3": "bok",
"t": "sawhorse",
"notext": "1"
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"expansion": "Dutch bok (“sawhorse”)"
},
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"name": "etymon",
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}
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"Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/bʰuǵ-#Proto-Indo-European:_he-goat"
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"*bukkaz",
"Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/bukkaz#Proto-Germanic:_he-goat"
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"*bukkô",
"Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/bukkô#Proto-Germanic:_he-goat"
],
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"*bukkō",
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"American English",
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[
"poker",
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"knife",
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],
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"hilt",
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],
[
"stag",
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],
[
"horn",
"horn"
],
[
"pass the buck",
"pass the buck"
],
[
"silver dollar",
"silver dollar"
],
[
"dollar",
"dollar"
]
],
"references": [],
"descendants": [
{
"lang": "Unami",
"lang_code": "unm",
"word": "palëpay",
"raw_tags": [
"semantic loan",
"semantic loan"
]
}
],
"lexical": [
{
"pos": "noun",
"glosses": [
"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.",
"The sound made by a chicken."
],
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