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Why Do We Call a Dollar a “Buck”?
There’s a lot of slang for American currency, from moolah to dough to greenbacks to dead presidents. (Though not all bills carry presidential faces: The $10 bill features Alexander Hamilton, technically making it a dead Secretary of the Treasury.) But the most pervasive example might be referring to cash as a buck. Gas is three bucks a gallon; it costs 12 bucks to see a movie; you give the pizza delivery driver eight bucks for a tip. So when and why did we start to refer to money in denominations of bucks? Buck is one of the more versatile words in the English language. Perhaps the oldest use is its role in Old ... (full story)
