Break from the Grind January 22, 2014
TRIVIAL PURSUITS: Why are dollars called bucks?
January 22, 2014 – Why are dollars also referred to as “bucks?”
Reported by PS
The use of “buck” to mean “money” came about from the days when a deerskin was a common medium of exchange. According to Snopes.com, the term appears as early as 1748 in the journal of Conrad Weiser, who wrote, while traveling through Indian territory (in what is now Ohio) in 1748, “He has been robbed of the value of 300 Bucks.”
A hundred years later, with the deerskin no longer a significant unit of trade, use of the word “buck” had shifted to a more general reference to the dollar.