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buck

Pronunciation: /ˈbʌk/

The English word “buck” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. 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.
  2. An uncastrated sheep, a ram.
  3. An antelope of either sex; compare with Afrikaans bok.
  4. The sound made by a chicken.
  5. A young buck; an adventurous, impetuous, dashing, or high-spirited young man.
  6. A fop or dandy.
  7. A black or Native American man.
  8. An Aboriginal man.
  9. Lowest rank; a private.
  10. A dollar (one hundred cents).
  11. A rand (currency unit).
  12. A sixpence.
  13. A euro.
  14. Money.
  15. One million dollars.
  16. One hundred.
  17. The body of a post mill, particularly in East Anglia. See Wikipedia:Windmill machinery.
  18. A frame on which firewood is sawed; a sawhorse; a sawbuck.
  19. A leather-covered frame used for gymnastic vaulting.
  20. A wood or metal frame used by automotive customizers and restorers to assist in the shaping of sheet metal bodywork.

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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.