Buckle

I canʹt buckle to. I canʹt give my mind to work. The allusion is to buckling on one’s armour or belt.

To cut the buckle. To caper about, to heel and toe it in dancing. In jigs the two feet buckle or twist into each other with great rapidity.

“Throth, it wouldnʹt lave a laugh in you to see the parson dancinʹ down the road on his way home, and the ministher and methodist, praicher cuttinʹ the buckle as they went along.”—W. B. Yeats: Fairy Tales of the Irish Peasantry, p. 98 (see also p. 196).

To put into buckle. To put into pawn at the rate of 40 per cent. interest.

To talk buckle. To talk about marriage.

“I took a girl to dinner who talked buckle to me.”—Vera. 154.

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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.