The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
BUCK
Definition of BUCK
noun
A male deer, antelope, sheep, goat, rabbit, hare, and sometimes the male of other animals such as the hamster, ferret, salmonid, shad, skunk and kangaroo.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
Inherited from Middle English bukke. Doublet of puck (“billy goat”). Currency-related senses hail from American English, a clipping of buckskin as a unit of trade among Native Americans and Europeans in frontier days (attested from 1748). The idea of rigidly standing implements is instilled by Dutch bok (“sawhorse”) as in zaagbok (“sawbuck”). The sense of an object indicating someone’s turn then occurred in American English, possibly originating from the game poker, where a knife (typically with a hilt made from a stag horn) was used as a place-marker to signify whose turn it was to deal. The place-marker was commonly referred to as a buck, which reinforced the term “pass the buck” used in poker, and eventually a silver dollar was used in place of a knife, which also led to a dollar being referred to as a buck.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
- Middle English
- English
One recorded step before English.
Deepest traced root
4th
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
6.2%
of traced words share this origin (4,995)
branch · 22.6% of traced words
How it is built
Same root, BUCK · 7 relatives in the game
Its etymology also names Dutch.
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
BUCK in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 11 boards so far. 16 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 8, 29 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 153, 20 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 8 days.
First found by a player on Day 8, 29 May 2026.
Built from these letters
BUCK starts with B and ends with K. Sorted, its letters read BCKU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. No letter is used twice, which makes it an isogram.
Words that start BUCK
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 8
Could you have found BUCK?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 8 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER