buffalo

plural buffaloes · plural buffalos

1. An animal from the subtribe Bubalina, also known as true buffalos, such as the Cape buffalo, Syncerus caffer, or the water buffalo, Bubalus bubalis.

   "It must be a very wild stretch of country, and full of big game. I have always wanted to kill a buffalo before I die."

   1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC

   3 more examples

   And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously.

   1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC

   From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims / And to the buffaloes who once ruled the plain / Like the vultures / Circling beneath the dark clouds / Looking for the rain / Well, they've been looking for the rain

   1974, Gil Scott-Heron, “Winter in America”, in Winter in America

   The feuds between Namsang and Borduria continued. In 1875-76 the dispute between the Namsang and Borduria arose about the buffaloes which were carried off by Borduria people from Namsang areas.

   2015, “Arunachal Pradesh”, in H. M. Bareh, editor, Encyclopaedia Of North-East India, 1st edition, Mittal Publications, →ISBN, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2022, page 72

   Synonyms: buffle

2. A related North American animal, the American bison, Bison bison.
3. abbreviationellipsisEllipsis of buffalo robe.
4. The buffalo fish (Ictiobus spp.).
5. USslangA nickel.
6. UShistoricalslangA looter during the Civil War.
7. derogatoryslangA large or stupid person.
8. derogatoryslangAn obese person, usually a woman.
9. derogatoryoffensiveslangA black male.
10. abbreviationellipsisEllipsis of American buffalo (“gold bullion coin”).

present singular third person buffaloes · participle present buffaloing · participle past buffaloed · past buffaloed

1. transitiveTo hunt buffalo.
2. USslangtransitiveTo outwit, confuse, deceive, or intimidate.

   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, →ISBN, page xi

   3 more examples

   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

   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, →ISBN, 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

   Synonyms: cow, bulldoze, bully, browbeat, cow, dastardize, daunt, dishearten

3. archaictransitiveTo pistol-whip.

   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, →ISBN, page 111

   1 more example

   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

1. A placename:
   1. A major city, the county seat of Erie County, New York, USA; very near Niagara Falls.

      1 more example

      And in yet another deadly mass shooting, unfolding in Buffalo on Saturday, a heavily armed white man is accused of killing 10 people after targeting a supermarket on the city’s predominantly Black east side, writing in a lengthy screed posted online that the shoppers there came from a culture that sought to “ethnically replace my own people.”

      2022 May 16, Nicholas Confessore, Karen Yourish, “A Fringe Conspiracy Theory, Fostered Online, Is Refashioned by the G.O.P.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 01 Aug 2022

   2. A small city in Scott County, Iowa.
   3. A city, the county seat of Wright County, Minnesota.
   4. A city, the county seat of Dallas County, Missouri.
   5. A town, the county seat of Harper County, Oklahoma.
   6. A census-designated place in Union County, South Carolina.
   7. A town, the county seat of Harding County, South Dakota.
   8. A small city in Leon County, Texas.
   9. A town in Putnam County, West Virginia.
   10. A town in Buffalo County, Wisconsin, not to be confused with Buffalo City in the same county.
   11. A town in Marquette County, Wisconsin.
   12. A city, the county seat of Johnson County, Wyoming.
   13. A number of townships, including in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania, listed under Buffalo Township.
   14. A rural municipality (the Rural Municipality of Buffalo No. 409) in western Saskatchewan, Canada.
   15. A number of places in South Africa.
   16. A town in South Gippsland Shire, south eastern Victoria, Australia.
   17. abbreviationellipsisEllipsis of Buffalo City.
   18. abbreviationellipsisEllipsis of Buffalo County.
   19. abbreviationellipsisEllipsis of Buffalo River.
   20. abbreviationellipsisEllipsis of Buffalo Township.