Talk:Sawbuck

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etymology[edit]

I'm deleting in Other uses as follows:

The term may derive from the fact that older versions of the bill included the roman numeral for ten, "X", which resembles one of the ends of the wood supporting device described above; ~~however, this is somewhat problematic because the first known use of sawbuck in print refers to the money and not the wood device~~.

The OED doesn't find it problematic: "In allusion to the x-shaped (Roman x = 10) ends of the sawyer's buck: cf. also buck n.8 dollar." In their citations, the difference is only 12 years (1862 for the device, 1850 for the money). That's not a big difference for that period.

Furthermore, they define the device name as "= buck n.7", which is

first attested in 1817 ("He bought himself a buck and saw, and became a redoubtable sawyer.")
and sourced from ... well, well, well! "Dutch zaag-boc, German sägebock, or shortly bock; the same word as bock goat".

So it's not unreasonable to hypothesize that the full form "sawbuck" may have been borrowed into English at the same time as the shorter form, or soon afterward.

--Thnidu (talk) 03:10, 7 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]