young buck

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English

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Noun

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young buck (plural young bucks)

  1. An adventurous or high-spirited young man.
    • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 19, in The History of Pendennis. [], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, [], published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
      Thus young Pen, the only son of an estated country gentleman, with a good allowance, and a gentlemanlike bearing and person, looked to be a lad of much more consequence than he was really; and was held by the Oxbridge authorities, tradesmen, and undergraduates, as quite a young buck and member of the aristocracy.
    • 1863, J[oseph] Sheridan Le Fanu, “In Which Captain Devereux’s Fiddle Plays a Prelude to ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’”, in The House by the Church-yard. [], volume I, London: Tinsley, Brothers, [], →OCLC, pages 307–308:
      Devereux, indeed, being a fast man, with such acres as he inherited, which certainly did not reach a thousand, mortgaged pretty smartly, and with as much personal debt beside, of the fashionable and refined sort, as became a young buck of bright though doubtful expectations—and if the truth must be owned, sometimes pretty nearly pushed into a corner—was beholden, not only for his fun, but occasionally for his daily bread and even his liberty, to those benovolent[sic] doles.
    • 2005 June 17, Tom Armstrong, Marvin (comic):
      Face it, Bernie, you're seventy-four years old ... you can't expect to be able to build a cart train as long as the young bucks.
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