buffalo - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

A herd of African buffalo (Syncerus caffer, noun sense 1)

An American bison (Bos bison, noun sense 2) in British Columbia

Borrowed from Portuguese or Spanish búfalo (“buffalo”), from Late Latin būfalus, from Latin būbalus, from Ancient Greek βούβαλος (boúbalos, “antelope, wild ox”). Doublet of bubale and buffle.

buffalo (plural buffaloes or buffalos or **buffalo)

  1. An animal from the subtribe Bubalina, also known as true buffalos, such as the Cape buffalo, Syncerus caffer, or the water buffalo, Bubalus bubalis.
    Synonym: (obsolete) buffle
    • 1922 February, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:
      And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously.
    • 1974, Gil Scott-Heron, “Winter in America”, in Winter in America:
      From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims / And to the buffaloes who once ruled the plain / Like the vultures / Circling beneath the dark clouds / Looking for the rain / Well, they've been looking for the rain
    • 2015, “Arunachal Pradesh”, in H. M. Bareh, editor, Encyclopaedia Of North-East India‎[1], 1st edition, Mittal Publications, →ISBN, archived from the original on 11 November 2022, page 72:
      The feuds between Namsang and Borduria continued. In 1875-76 the dispute between the Namsang and Borduria arose about the buffaloes which were carried off by Borduria people from Namsang areas.
  2. A related North American animal, the American bison, Bison bison.
  3. Ellipsis of buffalo robe.
  4. The buffalo fish (Ictiobus spp.).
  5. (US slang) A nickel.
  6. (slang, US, historical) A looter during the Civil War.
  7. (slang, derogatory) A large or stupid person.
  8. (slang, derogatory) An obese person, usually a woman.
  9. (slang, derogatory, offensive) A black male.
  10. Ellipsis of American buffalo (“gold bullion coin”).

bovid of the Bubalina subtribe

buffalo (third-person singular simple present buffaloes, present participle buffaloing, simple past and past participle buffaloed)

  1. (transitive) To hunt buffalo.
  2. (US, slang, transitive) To outwit, confuse, deceive, or intimidate.
    Synonyms: cow; see also Thesaurus:intimidate
    • 1983, Sam Shepard, Fool for Love, San Francisco: City Lights Books, page 20:
      I'm just gonna let you have it. Probably in the midst of a kiss. Right when you think everything’s been healed up. Right in the moment when you're sure you've got me buffaloed. That's when you'll die.
    • 1984, J. Victor Baldridge, The Campus and the Microcomputer Revolution, Macmillan, →ISBN, page xi:
      The nontechnical administrator should never be buffaloed by the esoteric vocabulary and the endless jargon of the computer expert.
    • 1998, John Updike, Bech At Bay, Random House, →ISBN, page 287:
      He was speaking to an indifferent audience of pale polite faces, in an overheated space on the Northern edge of Europe, a subcontinent whose natives for a few passing centuries had bullied and buffaloed the rest of the world.
    • 2006, William Zinsser, On Writing Well:
      If nonfiction is where you do your best writing, or your best teaching of writing, don't be buffaloed into the idea that it's an inferior species.
  3. (archaic, transitive) To pistol-whip.
    • 1931, Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, New York: Houghton Mifflin, page 173:
      Whereupon the twelve-inch barrel of the Buntline Special was laid alongside and just underneath the Rachal hatbrim most effectively. The buffaloed cattleman dropped to the walk, unconscious.
    • 1975, Cliff Farrell, The Mighty Land, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, →ISBN, page 111:
      He walked arrogant and scornful among the Texans and cavalrymen whom he hazed and buffaloed with the barrels of his guns when they got out of line.

outwit, confuse

pistol-whip

Borrowed from English buffalo.

buffalo

  1. (rare) buffalo (especially in a US context)

Borrowed from English buffalo.

buffalo

  1. buffalo (Asian or African)

This noun needs an inflection-table template.