[Ads-l] RES: "a buck" revisited

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri May 15 14:27:24 UTC 2015


> On May 15, 2015, at 10:18 AM, David Daniel <dad at COARSECOURSES.COM> wrote:
> 
> Yes, 100 of anything, including thousands, as in salary/income. "He makes a
> buck fifty" means he makes $150,000. I've heard it a lot, but only in the
> last 15-20 years or so.
> DAD

Right, works fine for money, weight, and batting average.  (Now that I think of it, the latter is where our thread began, especially as a way of impugning the year a given batter is having or his general abilities as a hitter, since even "a buck ninety", i.e. .190, is under what may still be called the Mendoza line.  But any examples of it being used to indicate the number of points a basketball team has scored?  "If the home team scores 100/??a buck, everyone in the arena gets a free pizza".
"??That's the first time the Cavs have scored a buck thirty in the playoffs."

These sound unusual to me.

LH
> 
> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "a buck" revisited
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
> 
> The HDAS entry does include a sense '_Broadly_, one hundred of anything,
> as points of a batting average of pounds of weight'.
> 
> Jesse Sheidlower
> 
> On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 08:17:57AM -0400, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> We've had at least one former thread on extended uses of "a buck" in
> various cases of metaphorical extension, referring to 100.  So someone can
> weigh a buck seventy (170), someone can be caught driving a buck twenty (120
> mph), something can cost a buck fifty ($150, not necessarily $1.50).  Can't
> recall when the thread was.  But there was a new one on me (and on Mike &
> Mike this morning) via a radio call of last night's playoff game: the
> announcer for the Houston Rockets, who drew even with the L.A. Clippers
> after an improbable fourth-quarter comeback, screaming about the Rockets
> tying it up at "a buck oh two", i.e. making it 102-102.  Anyone familiar
> with "a buck oh two" meaning '102 points', or even just "a buck" = '100
> points'?
>> 
>> LH
>> 
>> 
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