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buffalo

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Buffalo

English

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 buffalo on Wikipedia
A herd of African buffalo (Syncerus caffer, sense 1)
An American bison (Bison bison, sense 2) in British Columbia

Etymology

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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.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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buffalo (plural buffaloes or buffalos or buffalo)

  2. 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
    • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
      "It must be a very wild stretch of country, and full of big game. I have always wanted to kill a buffalo before I die."
    • 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.
    • 2015, “Arunachal Pradesh”, in H. M. Bareh, editor, Encyclopaedia Of North-East India‎[1], 1st edition, Mittal Publications, →ISBN, archived from the original on 2022-11-11, 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.
  4. A related North American animal, the American bison, Bison bison.
  5. Ellipsis of buffalo robe.
  6. The buffalo fish (Ictiobus spp.).
  7. (US slang) A nickel.
  8. Short for American buffalo (“gold bullion coin”).

Derived terms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

See also

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Verb

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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.

Translations

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References

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Northern Sami

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Etymology

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Borrowed from English buffalo.

Pronunciation

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  • (Kautokeino) IPA(key): /ˈpuffalo/

Noun

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buffalo

  1. buffalo (Asian or African)

Inflection

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This noun needs an inflection-table template.

Further reading

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  • Koponen, Eino, Ruppel, Klaas, Aapala, Kirsti, editors (2002–2008), Álgu database: Etymological database of the Saami languages‎[2], Helsinki: Research Institute for the Languages of Finland
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