bucks

1. 1
   nouncountableplural

   Money, especially in the form of cash or dollars.

   He made decent bucks driving for the delivery company last summer.

   They charged me forty bucks just to look at the engine.

   Similardollars, money, cash, dough

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of buck.

   Two bucks locked antlers in the clearing during the rut.

   The ranch hands counted the bucks before moving the herd.

   Note

   One spelling serves every countable meaning of buck: male deer, rams, hares and kangaroos, and, in Africa, antelopes of either sex. The human uses need care. The dashing young man survives mostly in the phrase young bucks. The fop is obsolete British. The label for Black or Native American men is dated and derogatory. The same letters also spell the verb form, as in a horse that bucks.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of buck.

   The wild stallion bucks the moment a rider settles into the saddle.

   Whenever the cinch pinches, the mare bucks and twists hard.

   Note

   The present-tense form carries both of the verb's constructions. It is intransitive when a horse simply bucks, leaping with its back arched, and transitive when it bucks a rider or a pack off. The broadened senses stay intransitive: a person bucks when resisting obstinately, and a vehicle or machine bucks when it moves in sharp, uneven jerks.

4. 4
   nouncountableplural

   Laced casual shoes in the oxford style, made of buckskin and often white or a neutral shade.

   He paired his seersucker suit with a fresh pair of bucks.

   Her grandfather kept his white bucks spotless with a chalk stick.

   Note

   A shoe named for its leather: the buckskin it is cut from gives it the name. In use it is plural-only, like most footwear words. People speak of a pair of bucks or white bucks, and the color often comes first as part of the name. It shares that plural-only habit with the slang for money, so the surrounding words decide which one is meant.

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