buffalo

Noun

buffalo (plural buffaloes or buffalos or buffalo)

1. An animal from the subtribe Bubalina, also known as true buffalos, such as the Cape buffalo, Syncerus caffer, or the water buffalo, Bubalus bubalis.
   • "It must be a very wild stretch of country, and full of big game. I have always wanted to kill a buffalo before I die."1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
   • And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously.1922 February 2, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   buffle

2. A related North American animal, the American bison, Bison bison.
3. The buffalo fish (Ictiobus spp.).
4. (US, slang) A nickel.
5. (US, historical, slang) A looter during the Civil War.
6. (derogatory, slang) A large or stupid person.
7. (derogatory, slang) An obese person, usually a woman.
8. (derogatory, offensive, slang) A black male.

Verb

buffalo (third-person singular simple present buffaloes, present participle buffaloing, simple past and past participle buffaloed)

1. (transitive) To hunt buffalo.
2. (US, slang, transitive) To outwit, confuse, deceive, or intimidate.
   • I'm just gonna let you have it. Probably in the midst of a kiss. Right when you think everything’s been healed up. Right in the moment when you're sure you've got me buffaloed. That's when you'll die.1983, Sam Shepard, Fool for Love, San Francisco: City Lights Books, page 20
   • The nontechnical administrator should never be buffaloed by the esoteric vocabulary and the endless jargon of the computer expert.1984, J. Victor Baldridge, The Campus and the Microcomputer Revolution, Macmillan, →ISBN, page xi

   Synonyms:

   cow, bulldoze, bully, browbeat, dastardize, daunt, dishearten, do down, domineer, drive

3. (archaic, transitive) To pistol-whip.
   • Whereupon the twelve-inch barrel of the Buntline Special was laid alongside and just underneath the Rachal hatbrim most effectively. The buffaloed cattleman dropped to the walk, unconscious.1931, Stuart N. Lake, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, New York: Houghton Mifflin, page 173
   • He walked arrogant and scornful among the Texans and cavalrymen whom he hazed and buffaloed with the barrels of his guns when they got out of line.1975, Cliff Farrell, The Mighty Land, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, →ISBN, page 111

Proper noun capitalized: Buffalo

US/ˈbʌfəloʊ/

Buffalo

1. A major city, the county seat of Erie County, New York, USA; very near Niagara Falls.
   • And in yet another deadly mass shooting, unfolding in Buffalo on Saturday, a heavily armed white man is accused of killing 10 people after targeting a supermarket on the city’s predominantly Black east side, writing in a lengthy screed posted online that the shoppers there came from a culture that...2022 May 16, Nicholas Confessore, Karen Yourish, “A Fringe Conspiracy Theory, Fostered Online, Is Refashioned by the G.O.P.”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 01 Aug 2022
2. A small city in Scott County, Iowa.
3. A city, the county seat of Wright County, Minnesota.
4. A city, the county seat of Dallas County, Missouri.
5. A town, the county seat of Harper County, Oklahoma.
6. A census-designated place in Union County, South Carolina.
7. A town, the county seat of Harding County, South Dakota.
8. A small city in Leon County, Texas.
9. A town in Putnam County, West Virginia.
10. A town in Buffalo County, Wisconsin, not to be confused with Buffalo City in the same county.
11. A town in Marquette County, Wisconsin.
12. A city, the county seat of Johnson County, Wyoming.