buffalo

Etymology

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

noun

1. Any of the Old World mammals of the family Bovidae, such as the Cape buffalo, Syncerus caffer, or the water buffalo Bubalus bubalis.
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.

verb

1. (transitive) To hunt buffalo.
2. (US, slang, transitive) To outwit, confuse, deceive, or intimidate.
   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. 1983, Sam Shepard, Fool for Love, San Francisco: City Lights Books, page 20
   The nontechnical administrator should never be buffaloed by the esoteric vocabulary and the endless jargon of the computer expert. 1984, J. Victor Baldridge, The Campus and the Microcomputer Revolution, Macmillan, page xi
   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. 1998, John Updike, Bech At Bay, Random House, page 287
   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. 2006, William Zinsser, On Writing Well
3. (archaic, transitive) To pistol-whip.
   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. 1931, Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, New York: Houghton Mifflin, page 173
   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. 1975, Cliff Farrell, The Mighty Land, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, page 111