Why a Dollar called a BUCK and the History of " $ " symble

BUCK : 1856, Amer.Eng., perhaps an abbreviation of buckskin, a unit of trade among Indians and Europeans in frontier days, attested in this sense from 1748. Pass the buck is first recorded in the lit. sense 1865, Amer.Eng.:



The origin of "buck" as slang for one dollar is a perennial mystery. The only even remotely plausible theory ties "buck" to "buckskins," which were occasionally used as a form of exchange in Early America. Unfortunately, "buck" in the "dollar" sense didn't appear until around 1856, long after such barter had been replaced by standard currency. Another problem with this theory is that buckskins were always worth substantially more than one dollar.

The origin of the dollar sign, usually rendered as an "S" with two vertical lines through it, is somewhat more certain. According to Professor Florian Cajori, author of a book called "A History of Mathematical Notations," our dollar sign actually started out as an abbreviation of "Peso," the Spanish unit of currency. As explained by my colleague Cecil Adams in his newspaper column "The Straight Dope," the Spanish dollar, known as the "peso de 8 reales," was used as standard currency in the U.S. until we got it together to mint our own money in 1794. "Pesos" was abbreviated "ps," and usually written with the letters overlapping, making a symbol which eventually evolved into our modern dollar sign.


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