Idiom
Pass the buck
To pass the buck is to push responsibility or blame onto someone else instead of dealing with it yourself.
How people use it
People use it about workers, managers or officials who avoid making decisions or admitting mistakes (every department kept passing the buck, so nobody fixed the problem). It is informal and critical. The related saying the buck stops here means the speaker accepts final responsibility. Buck-passing is the noun form, and someone who does it is a buck-passer.
Examples
- When the shipment arrived late, the manager passed the buck to the delivery company.
- Stop passing the buck and admit that you forgot to lock the door.
- Nobody in our study group passed the buck; we shared the blame for the mistake.
Where it comes from
The phrase comes from poker games in 1800s America. A marker called the buck was placed in front of the player whose turn it was to deal, and passing it moved that duty to the next player. The marker may have been a knife with a buckhorn handle, though that detail is less certain. President Harry Truman later made the reverse famous with a desk sign reading 'The buck stops here.'
Check yourself
1. What does it mean if a manager passes the buck?
Answer: He shifts responsibility to someone else. Pass the buck means avoiding responsibility by handing it to others.
2. Which sentence uses the idiom correctly?
Answer: Instead of fixing the error, the clerk passed the buck to her coworker.. Blaming a coworker shifts responsibility. Apologizing and fixing it is the opposite, and the dollar sentence is literal.
Similar idioms
Word game fan? See every word hiding in BUCK.