October 5, 2000

buck naked

Couldn't find this one in the archives or the OED. Do you know the origin of the term buck naked?

You just never know from which direction inspiration will strike. I was stretched out in front of the tube last night, tortilla chips in hand, watching the Gore/Bush debate. Well, ok, listening. I was making a thorough examination of the inside of my eyelids, if you must know, when a sentence from George W. distracted me from my labor. "I believe they've moved that sign, 'The Buck Stops Here,' from the Oval Office desk to 'The Buck Stops Here' on the Lincoln bedroom." I sat up. What is it that you pass when you pass the buck? Is it a good old George Washington dollar bill buck? Or is it another meaning of buck altogether? What are the other meanings of buck anyway? And, more importantly, was that a pun I just heard from Dubya? It was enough to send me to the books.

The Oxford English Dictionary attributes the main sense of buck as 'the male of various animals' to two Old English words, buc 'male deer' and bucca 'he-goat.' From there, only minor metaphorical leaps are needed to get you to most of the other noun and adjectival senses of buck. So, buckskin shortened to buck refers to the skin of a deer, and from there to shoes made out of the skin. Extensions of the "male" part of the meaning of buck yielded in the 1700's a slang term for a 'spirited young man,' and by the mid 1800's, offensive terms for a Native American or black man. By the 1870's, buck was short for the military slang term buck private, for a soldier of the lowest rank. Though unconfirmed, the consensus among those sources that took a stab at etymologizing buck private is that this term arose to designate a rank of 'having no status other than being male.' It is conceivable (but, unfortunately, not provable) that our slang term for a dollar also derived from the 'male deer' buck, taking an indirect route via buckskins, which were traded as a form of money on the frontier.

But what of the buck that "Stops Here," referring to responsibility or blame which is usually passed on to someone else, but which, since Harry Truman's time, supposedly stops at the president's desk? Is it the same buck multiplied by millions that the Clinton campaign coffers got in exchange for a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom? But no, this buck is undisputably a poker slang term dating from the late 1800's, for a marker designating the position of the dealer. After each hand, the buck (originally a buckhorn knife, but later any small article serving the purpose) is passed on to the next player who is to deal. The responsibility associated with the dealer position lay in the amount of money the dealer was required to put in the pot when his or her turn came. A pretty neat trick of Bush, methinks--from money anted up by the buck holder to bucks taken by the same.

Which brings me to your question, Dino. (You thought I'd forgotten all about it, didn't you?) Buck naked, slang for 'completely naked' came on the scene in the late 1920's, and the qualified buck-ass naked a bit later. It's one of those terms which is most often accompanied by the irritating phrase "of obscure orig." or "origin unk." Given the preceding array of choices, one might hazard (as only one of my sources did) that the buck in buck naked refers to the color of buckskin, along the lines of "buff," as in "in the buff." But, while we're conjecturing, I might propose another possible etymology. Around the same time that buck naked was making its debut, so was another slang term, bucket, for 'buttocks, rump.' Shorten bucket to buck, and you've got a term for 'ass-naked,' which makes sense in a very, erm, transparent way.

Helen