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You are here: Home / Language / Where Did the Word “Buck” Come From For a Dollar and How Did the Term Originate?

Where Did the Word “Buck” Come From For a Dollar and How Did the Term Originate?

March 2, 2020 by Karen Hill

The Indians taught the first European settlers the value of a buck.

Like gold, deer or buckskin was used in trading as a unit of value against which everything else was assessed.

That’s how a dollar was called a “buck”.

The phrase, “The buck stops here” is a different story altogether.

That expression came from frontier poker, in which the buck was a knife made of buckhorn that was passed around the table to indicate who was dealing.

When a hand was finished, the dealer “passed the buck” to the next player.

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Filed Under: Language

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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