noun
buck
Responsibility for dealing with a matter.
The manager refuses to pass the buck to her staff.
Etymology
A buck was a marker indicating whose turn it was to deal in poker. Passing the marker supplied the image for transferring responsibility to someone else.
More examples
- He kept trying to shift the buck to another department.
- The buck stops with the person in charge.
- They accused one another of passing the buck.
Forms
buck · bucks
Similar words
- responsibility
- The neutral term for the duty at stake.
- blame
- Responsibility for something that went wrong.