Buffalo

How to spell buffalo

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce buffalo

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does buffalo mean?

1. nounA large wild ox, such as the African or Asian water buffalo or the North American bison.
2. verbTo intimidate, bewilder, or pressure someone into doing something.

Buffalo in a sentence

• noun

  The herd of buffalo grazed slowly across the open plain.

• verb

  The salesman tried to buffalo her into signing the contract quickly.

• noun

  A single buffalo can weigh more than a small car.

• verb

  Clever lawyers can buffalo a nervous witness on the stand.

Where does buffalo come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word travelled into English from the Portuguese and Italian 'bufalo', which both descend from the Late Latin 'bufalus', a variant of the classical Latin 'bubalus' meaning 'wild ox' or 'antelope'. The Latin in turn borrowed it from the Greek 'boubalos', which originally referred to a kind of African antelope or gazelle before being applied to large oxen. English picked the term up in the 1500s, first for the Old World water buffalo of Asia and Africa, and later, somewhat inaccurately, for the shaggy North American bison. The spelling trap is the single 'f' against the doubled 'l'-free middle and the soft '-alo' ending, which tempts writers toward '-aloe' or '-allo'; remembering the Latin 'bufalus' with its one 'f' helps keep it straight. The colloquial verb sense, meaning to bewilder or browbeat someone, emerged in American slang in the late 1800s, picturing a person flustered as if charged by the animal.

How the word is built

• buffal- (from Late Latin bufalus: wild ox)
• -o (noun ending carried over from Italian/Portuguese)