To pass the buck is to push responsibility onto somebody else. Stop passing the buck, do not pass the buck, they passed the buck.
The reply to it is the famous sign on Truman's desk saying the buck stops here. In poker a marker called a buck showed whose turn it was to deal, and to pass the buck moved the duty on.
1phrasepass the buckTo push responsibility onto somebody else.
“When the project failed, the managers tried to pass the buck to the junior staff.”
pass the buck is an evading.
From poker, where a marker called a buck showed whose turn it was to deal.
May have originated with the game of poker, in which a marker or counter, frequently in frontier days a knife with a buckhorn handle, was used to indicate the person whose turn it was to deal. If the player did not wish to deal he could pass the responsibility by passing the "buckhorn" or "buck", as the marker came to be called, to the next player.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Idioms