Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A male deer.
  • noun The male of various other mammals, such as antelopes, kangaroos, mice, or rabbits.
  • noun Antelope considered as a group.
  • noun A robust or high-spirited young man.
  • noun A fop.
  • noun Offensive A Native American or black man.
  • noun An act or instance of bucking.
  • noun Buckskin.
  • noun Buckskin breeches or shoes.
  • intransitive verb To leap upward arching the back.
  • intransitive verb To charge with the head lowered; butt.
  • intransitive verb To make sudden jerky movements; jolt.
  • intransitive verb To resist stubbornly and obstinately; balk.
  • intransitive verb Informal To strive with determination.
  • intransitive verb To throw or toss by bucking.
  • intransitive verb To oppose directly and stubbornly; go against.
  • intransitive verb Football To charge into (an opponent's line) carrying the ball.
  • intransitive verb To butt against with the head.
  • adjective Of the lowest rank in a specified military category.
  • noun A sawhorse or sawbuck.
  • noun A leather-covered frame used for gymnastic vaulting.
  • noun Games A counter or marker formerly passed from one poker player to another to indicate an obligation, especially one's turn to deal.
  • noun Informal Obligation to account for something; responsibility.
  • transitive verb To pass (a task or duty) to another, especially so as to avoid responsibility.
  • idiom (the buck stops here) The ultimate responsibility rests here.
  • noun A dollar.
  • noun An amount of money.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The beech: a dialectal word used in literary English only in the compounds buck-mast and buckwheat; also in dialectal buck-log.
  • To copulate, as bucks and does.
  • To butt: a sense referred also to buck 4 (which see).
  • noun An apparatus used in the northwestern United States for gathering hay from the swath and transferring it directly to the foot of the stack. It consists of a coarse rake or cradle with horizontal teeth, supported at the two ends by wheels and propelled by horses at the rear. A drag-buck used on rougher ground is similar but without the wheels. The hay is elevated by means of a slide (see slide).
  • noun Lye in which clothes are soaked in the operation of bleaching; the liquor in which clothes are washed.
  • noun The cloth or clothes soaked or washed in lye or suds; a wash.
  • To make a noise in swallowing; gulp.
  • noun A hollow sound which a stone makes when thrown into the water from a height.
  • noun An earthenware pot made of clay found in some parts of British Guiana. Also called buckpot.
  • To bend; buckle.
  • To spring lightly.
  • To make a violent effort to throw off a rider or pack, by means of rapid plunging jumps performed by springing into the air, arching the back, and coming down with the fore legs perfectly stiff, the head being commonly held as low as possible: said of a horse or a mule.
  • To “kick”; make obstinate resistance or objection: as, to buck at improvements.
  • To punish by tying the wrists together, passing the arms over the bent knees, and putting a stick across the arms and in the angle formed by the knees.
  • To throw, or attempt to throw (a rider), by bucking: as, the bronco bucked him off.
  • noun The breast.
  • noun The body of a wagon.
  • noun In poker, any article placed in the pool with the chips, to be taken down by the winner, indicating that when he deals it shall be a jack-pot.
  • To saw (felled trees) into logs.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English bukke, from Old English buc, male deer, and bucca, male goat.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Alteration (influenced by buck) of Dutch bok, male goat, trestle, from Middle Dutch boc.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for buckhorn knife (from its use as a marker in poker).]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for buckskin (from its use in trade).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English buc, from Old English bucca ("he-goat, stag"), from Proto-Germanic *bukkô (“buck”) (compare West Frisian bok ("he-goat"), German Bock), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰug- (“ram”) (compare Albanian buzë, Old Armenian բուծ (buc, "sucking lamb"), Persian بز (boz, "goat"), Sanskrit बुख (bukha)).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle Low German bucken ("to bend") or Middle Dutch bucken, bocken ("to bend"), intensive forms of Old Saxon būgan and Old Dutch *būgan ("to bend, bow"), from Proto-Germanic *būganan (“to bend”), from Proto-Indo-European *bhūgh- (“to bend”). Cognate with German bücken ("to bend, stoop"), Danish bukke ("to buck"), Swedish bocka ("to bend, buck, bow"). In fluenced in some senses by buck ("male goat"). See above. Cf. bow.

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Examples

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  • Matt Dillon and Ben Cartwright. See A Horse is a Horse

    February 1, 2008

  • From the definitions: "The beech: a dialectal word used in literary English only in the compounds buck-mast and buckwheat; also in dialectal buck-log."

    The angular buckwheat grains resemble the larger angular fruits (buckmast) of the beech tree.

    February 24, 2011

  • I'll have to start saying 'The beech stops here!'

    February 24, 2011

  • I live near the southernmost population of American beech in North America, all the way "down" in north-central Florida. It is odd to see what I consider a "northern" US species growing among magnolias and sable palms.

    February 24, 2011

  • There are beeches here in my bit of the tropics but they're unimpressive compared to the lovely specimens I saw (and drank) in Russia.

    February 24, 2011

  • Southern beeches, bilby, of the genus Nothofagus I presume. They are classified in a different family than that of the northern hemisphere beeches.

    February 24, 2011

  • Life's a beech.

    February 24, 2011

  • *beech slap*

    February 24, 2011

  • You're so beechy.

    February 24, 2011

  • electronics - to reduce voltage.  convert to a lower voltage

    June 18, 2016