Chapter Brutus to Budget of B by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Buck A dandy. (See below.)

“A most tremendous buck he was, as he sat there serene, in state, driving his greys.”- Thackeray: Vanity Fair, chap. vi.

Buck-basket A linen-basket. To buck is to wash clothes in lye; and a buck is one whose clothes are buck, or nicely got up. When Cade says his mother was “descended from the Lacies,” two men overhear him, and say, “She was a pedlar's daughter, but not being able to travel with her furred pack, she washes bucks here at home.” (2 Henry VI., iv. 2.) (German, beuchen, to steep clothes in lye; beuche, clothes so steeped. However, compare “bucket,” a diminutive of the Anglo-Saxon buc.)

Buck-bean A corruption of bog-bean, a native of wet bog-lands.

Buck-rider (A). A dummy fare who enables a cabman to pass police-constables who prevent empty cabs loitering at places where cabs will be likely to be required, as at theatres, music-halls, and large hotels. A cabman who wants to get at such a place under hope of picking up a fare gives a “buck” a shilling to get into his cab that he may seem to have a fare, and so pass the police.

“Constables are stationed at certain points to spot the professional `buck-riders.' ”- Nineteenth Century (March, 1893, p. 576).

Buck-tooth A large projecting front-tooth. (See Butter Tooth .)

Buckwheat A corruption of boc. German, buche, beech-wheat; it is so called because it is triangular, like beech-mast. The botanical name is Fagopyrum (beech-wheat).

“The buckwheat
Whitened broad acres, sweetening with its flowers
The August wind.”
Bryant: The Fountain, stanza 7.

Buckhorse A severe blow or slap on the face. So called from a boxer of that name.

Buckingham (Saxon, boccen-ham, beech-tree village.) Fuller, in his Worthies, speaks of the beech- trees as the most characteristic feature of this county.

Bucklaw or rather Frank Hayston, lord of Bucklaw, a wealthy nobleman, who marries Lucia di Lammermoor (Lucy Ashton), who had pledged her troth to Edgar, master of Ravenswood. On the wedding-night Lucy murders him, goes mad, and dies. (Donizetti's opera of Lucia di Lammermoor. Sir Walter Scott's Bride of Lammermoor.)

Buckle I can't buckle to. I can't give my mind to work. The allusion is to buckling on one's armour or belt.
   To cut the buckle. To caper about, to heel and toe it in dancing. In jigs the two feet buckle or twist into each other with great rapidity.

“Throth, it wouldn't lave a laugh in you to see the parson dancin' down the road on his way home, and the ministher and methodist praicher cuttin' the buckle as they went along.”- W. B. Yeats: Fairy Tales of the Irish Peasantry, p. 98 (see also p. 196).

   To put into buckle. To put into pawn at the rate of 40 per cent. interest.
   To talk buckle. To talk about marriage.

“I took a girl to dinner who talked buckle to me.”- Vera, 154.

Buckler (See Shield. )

Bucklersbury (London) was at one time the noted street for druggists and herbalists; hence Falstaff says-

“I cannot cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn buds, that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple time.”- Shakespeare: Merry Wives of Windsor, iii. 3.