Other forms: bucks, bucking, bucked
To buck is what a horse does when it leaps with its back arched and its hind legs kicking out. The horse bucked and he came off.
The noun is a male deer, rabbit or antelope, and in American informal English a buck is a dollar. From the horse comes the figurative buck a trend, meaning to go against it, which is common in business writing. And pass the buck means to push responsibility onto somebody else — from a marker passed round a poker table — which is why the desk sign said the buck stops here.
1verbbuckOf a horse, to leap with the back arched and hind legs kicking.
“The pony bucked twice and stopped.”
2nounmaleA male deer, rabbit or antelope.
“A buck came out of the trees at the far end.”
3verbagainstTo go against a trend or an expectation.
“Sales bucked the trend and rose.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
buck is a leap, or a male animal.
The money sense is the one that can be traced. Buck is a clipping of buckskin, which served as a unit of trade between Native Americans and Europeans on the frontier and is attested from 1748.
Middle English
bukke
English, today
buck
Built from
From Middle English bukke. a doublet of puck. Currency-related senses hail from American English, a 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 bok as in zaagbok (“sawbuck”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA