Etymology Borrowed from Portuguese or Spanish búfalo (“buffalo”), from Late Latin būfalus, from Latin būbalus, from Ancient Greek βούβαλος (boúbalos, “antelope, wild ox”). Doublet of bubale and buffle.
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, James Joyce, Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:
2 more examples
From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims / And to the buffaloes who once ruled the plain / Like the vultures / Circling beneath the dark clouds / Looking for the rain / Well, they've been looking for the rain1974, Gil Scott-Heron, “Winter in America”, in Winter in America:
The feuds between Namsang and Borduria continued. In 1875-76 the dispute between the Namsang and Borduria arose about the buffaloes which were carried off by Borduria people from Namsang areas.2015, “Arunachal Pradesh”, in H. M. Bareh, editor, Encyclopaedia Of North-East India, 1st edition, Mittal Publications, →ISBN, archived from the original on 11 Nov 2022, page 72:
2
A related North American animal, the American bison, Bison bison.
Etymology Borrowed from Portuguese or Spanish búfalo (“buffalo”), from Late Latin būfalus, from Latin būbalus, from Ancient Greek βούβαλος (boúbalos, “antelope, wild ox”). Doublet of bubale and buffle.
1
To hunt buffalo.
2
US, Slang 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:
2 more examples
He was speaking to an indifferent audience of pale polite faces, in an overheated space on the Northern edge of Europe, a subcontinent whose natives for a few passing centuries had bullied and buffaloed the rest of the world.1998, John Updike, Bech At Bay, Random House, →ISBN, page 287:
If nonfiction is where you do your best writing, or your best teaching of writing, don't be buffaloed into the idea that it's an inferior species.2006, William Zinsser, On Writing Well:
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: