Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also backshee, backsheesh, backshish, bakshish, buckshee, bucksheech, buckshish) a gratuity, a tip; cite 1894 extends sense to a bribe.

1768		5 May in Eng. Records on Shivaji (1931) 161: [A]nd wee doe likewise consent to take beetlenutts for our bucksiss.
1828		[C. D’Oyly] Tom Raw, The Griffin 27: Poor Tom is sweltering on a foreign strand; / The Manjee soon his trunk and boat-cloak brings, / Demanding buxish – ‘I don’t understand,’ / [...] / ‘Buxish,’ the Manjee roars, with outstretched hand. / ‘Man want rupee,’ exclaimed a spruce Ram-Johnny, / Who, eagerly pressed near him – ‘man he want some money.’.
1837		Vermont Teleg. (Brandon, VT) 11 Oct. 2/3: I hired a fishing-boat [...] With eight stout oarmen, and a promise of buckshee [...] I arrived in twenty-three hours.
1839		J.G. Kinnear Cairo, Petra and Damascus (1841) 38: I suppose, that their chance of any baksheesh would depend on my reaching the ground.
1843		Bellew Memoirs of a Griffin I 244: [He] said something [...] in which the word buckshish (presents) was remarkably distinct.
1844		Hertford Mercury & Reformer (Herts.) 2 Nov. 1/6: Then [...] with an impudent grin and extended hand, ‘Baksheesh!’.
1844		J.W. Kaye Peregrine Pultuney II 21: The inhabitants of Fultah [...] clamoured very loudly for buxees.
1854		Blackwood’s Edinburgh Mag LXXXIX 39: To be lost, as it were, in heavenly thoughts, and then all at once to be aroused by such a thief-like clamour for baksheesh.
1863		L. Duff Gordon 19 Apr. Letters from the Cape (1875) 328: I think they must be like the Turks in manner, as they have all the eastern gentlemanly ease and politeness [...] and no idea of Baksheesh; withal frugal, industrious, and moneymaking.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. 87: buckshish, a present of money.
1867		G.E. Clark Seven Years of a Sailor’s Life 141: I gave the ostler his ‘buckshees,’ or perquisite.
1868		Sportsman 9 Jan. 2/1: Notes on News [...] The baksheesh beggars of Alexandria.
1869		Man about Town 9 Oct. 34/3: The karamzodeh seemed to measure their obtrusive civility by their prospects of backshish.
1875		Graphic 27 Nov. 6/2: We left the hotel when we heard a great jabbering for ‘baksheesh’.
1875		‘Aliph Cheem’ Lays of Ind (1905) 37: But, yes, I promised half the sircar backsheesh if I passed.
1876		Sheffield Dly Teleg. (Yorks.) 9 Mar. 5/2: The Oriental beggars who bother you for backsheesh are not greater persecutors of public patience than [etc.].
1883		J. Keane On Blue Water 160: I soon came to an understanding with the old fellow. First, a little high-handed treatment, and then a hint of a little soothing bakshish.
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 7 June 46/1: We must not forgot the priest’s ‘bakshish,’ or the fee to the presiding Brahmin.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 18 Apr. 9/3: The natives are more insolent and overbearing than even when we first came, and everything has to be purchased by liberal bucksheech.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) VII 1361: There she stopped, smiled, nodded, and held out her hand. — I understood Backsheesh and dropped a small coin into it.
1890		Kipling ‘The God from the Machine’ in Soldiers Three (1907) 13: I niver asked for bakshish.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 23 Dec. 3/2: A Little ‘Palm-Oil’ [...] If baksheeshprevalsi in the United States is it unknown here?
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 91: That knocked all my pipe-dreams of [...] distributing backsheesh among the natives.
1904		Minneapolis Jrnl (MN) 23 July 25/2: [cartoon caption] I’ll give ye a dollar apiece — heap bucksheesh.
1906		Gadfly (Adelaide) 28 Nov. 809/1: ‘Here!’ said my brother one morning at breakfast, throwing some money across the table, in the take-it-I’ll-starve manner, affected by one’s male relatives when bestowing baksheesh.
1906		Civil & Milit. Gaz. (Lahore) 17 Jan. 7/3: [O]nly a griffin, a tourist or a travelling M. P. would fall into the error of imagining that the gaze’'s thoughts are centred on aught loftier than paisa, bakshish and the like.
1911		Dundee Eve. Teleg. 28 Aug. 6/1: If liberal ‘bucksheesh’ is not given the chances of contnued success are small.
1915		F. Garrett diary 15 Aug. 🌐 Got some ‘bachseesh’ tomatoes and grapes from passing Greeks [...] think this gist was he had already given ‘backseesh’ to the sentry at our camp.
1916		‘Anzac’ On the Anzac Trail 22: The natives [...] are intensely religious, always looking for backsheesh, and have no morals.
1918		Kia Ora Coo-ee 15 June 15/1: Then, through the cymbals’ rhythm, I suddenly recognised the old, old refrain, ‘Gib it backsheesh; gib it backsheesh.’ I gave.
1920		Bott in Harper’s Pictorial Library of the World War X 235: I met a Turkish officer [...] and then worked the game of bakshish, which is really a national game in Turkey. I gave the officer a couple of pounds and he peeled the uniform. He put on mine.
1940		J. MacLaren-Ross ‘A Bit of a Smash in Madras’ in Memoirs of the Forties (1984) 290: Baksheesh, that’s all they think about in this country.
1947		S.J. Perelman Westward Ha! 121: Who can get baksheesh out of an Armenian?
1959		A. Sinclair My Friend Judas (1963) 61: Those eighteenth-century French bums who weren’t philosophers and would have sold their mothers for any baksheesh from the Bourbons.
1971		(con. WWII) B. Aldiss Soldier Erect 35: Kids [...] still working on squeezing one last baksheesh from us.
1972		J. McNeill Old Familiar Juice (1973) 82: dadda: Oh, Queen Farieda, gives baksheesh!
1980		M. Bail Homesickness (1999) 191: He’s after baksheesh.
1987		M. Bail Holden’s Performance (1989) 330: The concrete contractors holding their palms out for backsheesh.
1999		G. Seal Lingo 57: baksheesh meant money, a term that is still heard occasionally, now meaning a bribe or kickback.
2013		R. Robinett ‘Wheels’ in ThugLit July-Aug. [ebook] ‘Had to pay a lot of baksheesh to get that bay [i.e. a knife] through [customs]’.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1910		H. Hapgood Types From City Streets 185: Baksheesh rates are fairly well fixed at the Mina House.
1928		B. Bunting ‘First Book of Odes’ in Complete Poems 7: Endless disappointed buckshee-hunt!
2001		N. Barlay Hooky Gear 227: He must be, smooth as a silk cravat, bullshittin Baksheesh Bill.

3. (also backsheesh, buckshee) something free, a ‘perk’.

1918		L.N. Smith Lingo of No Man’s Land 9: BAKSHEESH — Money; food, anything left over in the pot .
1921		N&Q 12 Ser. IX 418: ‘Buckshee’ was most commonly used to indicate the food left over after everyone had been served.
1924		(con. WWI) A.G. Pretty Gloss. of Sl. [...] in the A.I.F. 1921–1924 (rev. t/s) n.p.: buckshee. A prize, a catch, a windfall, something for nothing. From Hindi, bakhshi: giver or bucksheesh gift, tip.
1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 260: Their like as takers of backsheesh would be no more in the land.
1959		S. Bellow Henderson The Rain King 259: I promised you backsheesh, old man, and here are the papers for the jeep, made over to you.
1959		W. Hall Long and the Short and the Tall Act II: There’s no more buckshees for the Nippo, Bamforth.
1968		(con. WWII) D. Westheimer Song of the Young Sentry (1969) 113: If I helped you out it wouldn’t be for any buckshee.
2002		Observer Rev. 27 Oct. 4: Dead broke despite US baksheesh.