What the Buck?

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:15 PM -0500 12/19/08, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 01:10:54PM -0500, Doug Harris wrote:
>>  A NY Times business story today ("On Wall
>>Street, Bonuses, Not Profits, Were Real ")
>>included a
>>  new-to-me escalation of the amount of money
>>that might be referred to as "a buck":
>>  _On Wall Street, the first goal was to make “a
>>buck” — a million dollars. More than 100 people
>>in
>>  Merrill’s bond unit alone broke the million-dollar mark in 2006._
>>  --
>>  The second sentence suggests how widespread
>>that understanding of 'buck' apparently is in
>>the
>>  rightfully-endangered fast-buck community around Wall Street.
>>  It seems like only yesterday, or so, that a
>>'buck' was a dollar. Then it became five
>>dollars, then
>>  a hundred, and I seem to recall hearing it
>>used to represent a thousand dollars a time or
>>two.
>>  Maybe, if you hang in the right circles, the
>>'buck' moniker has been attached to assorted
>>other
>>  specific amounts -- say, $100,000, or
>>$100,000,000. Or is Wall Street's (recent?)
>>usage unique,
>>  escalation wise?
>
>HDAS has examples of _buck_ as $100, $1000, and $100,000....
>
>_buck_ '$1,000,000' has been common for some years on Wall
>Street.
>
>Jesse Sheidlower
>OED
>
Then too, as we've discussed on a thread a few
years back, there are the metaphorical
extensions:  a shortstop weighing 175 and hitting
.150 could be said to weigh a buck seventy-five
and to be hitting a buck fifty.

LH

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