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Buck-basket

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A linen-basket. To buck is to wash clothes in lye; and a buck is one whose clothes are buck, or nicely got up. When Cade says his mother was “descended from the Lacies,” two men overhear him, and say, “She was a pedlar’s daughter, but not being able to travel with her furred pack, she washes bucks here at home.” (2 Henry VI., iv. 2.) (German, beuchen, to steep clothes in lye; beuche, clothes so steeped. However, compare “bucket,” a diminutive of the Anglo-Saxon buc.)

 

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

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Bub
Bubastis
Bubble (A)
Bubble and Squeak
Bucca
Buccaneer
Bucentaur
Bucephalos [bull-headed]
Buchanites
Buck
Buck-basket
Buck-bean
Buck-rider (A)
Buck-tooth
Buckwheat
Buckhorse
Buckingham
Bucklaw
Buckle
Buckler
Bucklersbury (London)