Word.ws English Dictionary

double sawbuck

double sawbuck noun: twenty dollars; a twenty-dollar bill.

Noun

double sawbuck (plural double sawbucks)

  1. (US, slang) Twenty dollars; a twenty-dollar bill.
    • I got five double sawbucks out of my wallet and dropped them in front of him.1953, Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, Penguin, published 2010, page 14
    • It's crazy, a stud like you paying that dame that you told me about, double sawbucks.1969, Waldo Salt, Midnight Cowboy, spoken by Ratso (Dustin Hoffman)
  2. (US, slang) A twenty-year prison sentence.

Forms of double sawbuck

pluraldouble sawbucks

Origin of double sawbuck

The number 20 is written XX in Roman numerals; this resembles two of the sawbucks used for cutting wood.

Questions about double sawbuck

What does double sawbuck mean?
Double sawbuck means twenty dollars; a twenty-dollar bill.
What part of speech is double sawbuck?
Double sawbuck is a noun.
What is the plural of double sawbuck?
The plural of double sawbuck is double sawbucks.

Words near double sawbuck in the dictionary

  1. double rotations
  2. double S
  3. double S's
  4. double salt
  5. double salts
  6. double sawbuck
  7. double sawbucks
  8. double science
  9. double scull
  10. double sculls
  11. double seat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: double sawbuck (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-double sawbuck.ogg.

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