Word.ws English Dictionary

buck breaking

buck breaking noun: the act of publicly punishing a male slave, typically by flogging him, and in some cases subsequently sexually assaulting or raping him in front of other slaves, in order to humiliate him.

Noun

buck breaking (uncountable)

  1. (offensive) The act of publicly punishing a male slave, typically by flogging him, and in some cases subsequently sexually assaulting or raping him in front of other slaves, in order to humiliate him.
    • One example of this destructive process came in the form of “buck breaking.” This practice involved the breaking of the most masculine, rebellious, and/or influential of the enslaved Black males.2015, Mwalimu J. Shujaa, Kenya J. Shujaa, The SAGE Encyclopedia of African Cultural Heritage in North America
    • Slaves were subject to a process called “buck breaking,” a method that was used by slave owners to strike fear in the observing slaves.2018, Rashad McCants, Plantation Education

Examples of buck breaking in a sentence

  • As a means of breaking us psychologically, during slavery, white slave masters' implemented the “buck breaking” method.2018, C. M. Fox, K. C. Dillon, Conversations of a Conscious Black Girl, page 16:
  • We are playing the devil's game without his infernal name in this good for nothing God forsaken buck breaking society.2021, Richard Shine, The Emmanuel 9:

Origin of buck breaking

buck (in derogatory US sense of a black man) + breaking (as in breaking a horse)

Questions about buck breaking

What does buck breaking mean?
Buck breaking means the act of publicly punishing a male slave, typically by flogging him, and in some cases subsequently sexually assaulting or raping him in front of other slaves, in order to humiliate him.
How do you use buck breaking in a sentence?
As a means of breaking us psychologically, during slavery, white slave masters' implemented the “buck breaking” method.
What part of speech is buck breaking?
Buck breaking is a noun.

Words near buck breaking in the dictionary

  1. Buciumi
  2. buck
  3. buck ague
  4. buck bean
  5. buck beans
  6. buck breaking
  7. buck buck
  8. buck converter
  9. buck converters
  10. buck dance
  11. buck danced

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buck breaking (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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