buffalo n.1
1. (US) during the Civil War, a looter.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Americanisms 282: Occasionally, the bummer was called a buffalo, a term peculiar at first to North Carolina, and thence spreading over the South. |
2. (US) a Southerner who does not support the Confederacy.
 | Rebel Prisons 243: The rebels were very bitter against these ‘buffaloes,’ as they called them, for many of them had been on their side, and left it for the service of the Union [DA]. |
3. a large, stupid person; also as adj.
| Charcoal Sketches (1865) 89: I don’t think I like that buffalo fellow, Fitzflam. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Observer (London) 19 Aug. 4/1: ‘Whenever he sees me he shouts to the neighbours, “Here comes the big buffalo”’ (laughter). | |
| Stories Cops Only Tell Each Other 73: Some wise-guy buffalo with his load on would come into Chinatown to eat and he’d start to push the waiters around. | |
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | Gayle 59/2: buffalo n. vulgar heterosexual person. |
4. (US Und.) a black male.
| Vocab. Criminal Sl. 20: buffalo General usage in the northern states. A negro. | |
| Two and Three 19 Feb. [synd. col.] Buffalo carved a couple of bones out of ice and stuck magnets on ’em for spots. | |
| Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 38: buffalo.–A negro, especially in the Western States. The dark, closely curling hair of the negro is probably responsible for the name. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | |
| , | | DAS. |
| Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 47: Allusions to Other Physical Difference: buffalo [perhaps from buffalo-soldier (1873), a black soldier so called on the American frontier because their hair texture was thought to resemble the coat of the buffalo]. |
5. (US) a fat woman.
| , | | DAS. |
6. (US) a male.
| CB Slanguage 18: Buffalo: man; husband. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
(Aus.) a bullock-driver.
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Aus. Lang. 67: Here are a few of the names by which he [i.e. the bullock driver] and his kind are known: bull puncher, bullocker, buffalo navigator, bovine puncher. | |
| Southerly 7 100: To give a trivial illustration: cow-conductor, cow-spanker, steer-pilot, ox-persuader, buffalo navigator smack so strongly of journalese that one doubts whether they are genuine coin in the bush, or if heard there anything more than ephemeral. |
(US) weak beer.
| (con. 1968) Citadel (1989) 25: I wisht I could [...] see some of that shit instead of serving buffalo piss to these guys at the club. [Ibid.] 181: You fuckers [...] wouldn’t know fine champagne from water buffalo piss. | |
| (con. 1973) Ted’s Trip Through the Ether 🌐 Anyway to come to a conclusion we decided that the Brit Rep did not want his boys ‘drinking our buffalo piss and barking at the moon’. | |
| Kai’s Komic Kaptions 🌐 Gah! This tastes like buffalo piss! Psst, hey buddy! Would you go get me a REAL drink? |
1. (US) a black soldier fighting in the US Army.
| in Army Letters from An Officer’s Wife (1909) 65: The officers say the negroes make good soldiers and fight like fiends [...] The Indians call them ‘buffalo soldiers,’ because their woolly heads are so much like the matted cushion that is between the horns of the buffalo. | |
| Ariz. Wkly Jrnl-Miner Presscott, AZ) 13 Aug. 1/7: Buffalo Soldier: Colored members of Uncle Sam’s army. | |
| Mirror of Life 24 Feb. 14/1: This buffalo soldier, as the Indians called them on account of their woolly heads [...] concluded to whip Billy the Kid. | |
| Cowboy Lingo 198: A negro soldier, such as served at the frontier forts, was called a ‘buffalo soldier’. | |
| Range Riders Western May 95/2: A small body of Buffalo Soldiers—Negro troopers—on their way to join the Long Knives [DA]. | |
![[WI]](/static/img/flags/wi.png "West Indies") | ‘Buffalo Soldier’ 🎵 There was a buffalo soldier in the heart of America. | |
| Lang. of Ethnic Conflict 47: Allusions to Other Physical Difference: buffalo [perhaps from buffalo-soldier (1873), a black soldier so called on the American frontier because their hair texture was thought to resemble the coat of the buffalo]. |
2. used in Indian Army as term of address [full meaning unclear].
![[Ind]](/static/img/flags/ind.png "India") | Stray Leaves (2nd ser.) 36: ‘Arrah, where did ye learn that iligant spache, me fine old buffalo sojer?’. |
3. (US) a Southerner who does not support the Confederacy.
| (ref. to 1864–5) Word-List 7: Buffalo soldier: n. A Southerner who, near the end of the Civil War, fought for, or sympathized with, the North [DA]. |
In phrases
to push one’s way (through).
| Concrete Kimono 97: By the time I had picked my ignominious self up, Reba had made a buffalo to the door. ‘Stop that girl!’ I shouted. |
to pressurize.
| Ruggles of Red Gap (1917) 362: I had put a buffalo on him! |