American Heritage Dictionary Entry: buffalo HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key. Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window. guide to the dictionary THE USAGE PANEL The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions. The Panelists NEED HELP SOLVING A CROSSWORD PUZZLE? Go to our Crossword Puzzle Solver and type in the letters that you know, and the Solver will produce a list of possible solutions. -- AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android. THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more. OPEN DICTIONARY PROJECT Share your ideas for new words and new meanings of old words! Start Sharing Now! -- See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series! Find out more! INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES? Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com Buf·fa·lo (bŭfə-lō′) Share: Tweet A city of western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie on the Canadian border. It is a major Great Lakes port of entry and an important manufacturing and milling center. Buf′fa·loni·an adj. & n. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. buf·fa·lo (bŭfə-lō′) Share: Tweet n. pl. buffaloor buf·fa·loes or buf·fa·los 1. a. Any of several large African and Asian ruminant mammals of the family Bovidae, such as the water buffalo and the African buffalo. b. The American bison (Bison bison). c. The flesh of the American bison, used as food. 2. Any of several North American suckers of the genus Ictiobus, having a dark body and an arched back. Also called buffalo fish. tr.v. buf·fa·loed, buf·fa·lo·ing, buf·fa·loes 1. To intimidate or frighten, as by a display of authority: “The board couldn't buffalo the federal courts as it had the Comptroller” (American Banker). 2. To confuse or deceive: “Too often ... job seekers have buffaloed lenders as to their competency and training” (H. Jane Lehman). [Italian bufalo or Portuguese or Spanish búfalo, from Late Latin būfalus, from Latin būbalus, antelope, buffalo, from Greek boubalos, antelope, perhaps from bous, cow; see gwou- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.] Word History: When most Americans hear the word buffalo, they probably think of the American bison. In fact, buffalo originally referred to the water buffalo (an animal that was introduced to western Europe from Asia in late antiquity) and other large bovid animals of Eurasia and Africa. The history of buffalo begins with the Greek word boubalos, “antelope.” The Romans borrowed this word as būbalus, “antelope.” In his work on natural history, however, the Roman author Pliny the Elder notes that the common people used būbalus to refer to the aurochs, the huge wild ox (now extinct) that once roamed northern Europe, and Pliny considered this to be a mistake. Eventually the Latin word, in its Late Latin form būfalus, became the name for the water buffalo when it was introduced to Europe. Būfalus developed into bufalo in Italian and búfalo in Portuguese and Spanish, and then English borrowed buffalo, with the sense “any of various species of large bovine animals,” from one or more of these languages. How did the word buffalo come to be the popular name for the American bison? When the English first began to visit and settle in North America, it is likely that most of them had never seen the European bison, or wisent, the closest relative of the American bison. The wisent had mostly vanished from western Europe in the Middle Ages, the victim of hunting and deforestation. The English were probably much more familiar with domestic water buffalo, and they may even have heard of the aurochs, and so when they encountered the American bison, many of them called it by the name of the largest bovine animal they had known before, the buffalo. Already in 1625, English writers were using buffalo to describe the bison of America. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices: Indo-European Roots Semitic Roots The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. 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