buffalo

From Portuguese or Spanish búfalo (“buffalo”), from Late Latin būfalus, from Latin būbalus, from Ancient Greek βούβαλος (boúbalos, “antelope, wild ox”).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbʌf.əl.əʊ/

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• (US) enPR: bŭf'ə-lō, IPA^(key): /ˈbʌf.ə.loʊ/

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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

   • 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."

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. Short for American buffalo (“gold bullion coin”).

• Appendix:Animals
• Appendix:English collective nouns

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.

• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• “buffalo”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Jonathon Green (2024) “buffalo n.¹”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang
• Jonathon Green (2024) “buffalo n.²”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang
• Jonathon Green (2024) “buffalo v.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Borrowed from English buffalo.

• (Kautokeino) IPA^(key): /ˈpuffalo/

buffalo

1. buffalo (Asian or African)

This noun needs an inflection-table template.

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