buckbuck

The story

Currency-related senses hail from American English, a clipping of buckskin as a unit of trade among Native Americans and Europeans in frontier days (attested from 1748). The idea of rigidly standing implements is instilled by Dutch bok (‘sawhorse’) as in zaagbok (‘sawbuck’). The sense of an object indicating someone’s turn then occurred in American English, possibly originating from the game poker, where a knife (typically with a hilt made from a stag horn) was used as a place-marker to signify whose turn it was to deal. The place-marker was commonly referred to as a buck, which reinforced the term “pass the buck” used in poker, and eventually a silver dollar was used in place of a knife, which also led to a dollar being referred to as a buck.