The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

Buffalo

How did buffalo come to mean enthusiast? What’s the connection between the beast and the music buff?

To answer that, you first need to know that buffalo aren’t buffalo; and also that buffalo is one of the most curious words in the English language.

The ancient Greek word boubalos was applied to some sort of African antelope. Then boubalos was changed to buffalo and applied to various kinds of domesticated oxen. That’s why you still have water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis). Any ox in Europe could once be called a buffalo.

Then the same thing happened to buffalos that had happened to turkeys. Explorers arrived in North America, saw some bison, and wrongly assumed that they were the same species as the European ox. Biologically they aren’t related, and to this day scientists will become all tetchy if you call a bison a buffalo, but who cares? The name stuck.

Now, let’s jump back across the Atlantic and take another look at those European oxen. They were called buffalo, but the name was often shortened to buff. European buffalo used to get killed and skinned and the leather that resulted was therefore known as buff, or buffe leather.

This leather was very useful for polishing, which is why we still buff things until they shine. When something has been properly buffed it looks good, and from that we get the idea that people who spend too much time at the gym running around like crazed gerbils are buff.

An odd thing about buff leather is that it’s rather pale and, in fact, looks very like human skin. That’s why naked people are referred to as being in the buff, because it looks as though they are dressed in buff leather.

Some people really did dress in buff leather, as it’s a good strong material. For example, in the nineteenth century the uniform of the New York firefighters was made from buff and the firefighters themselves were often called buffs.

The firefighters of New York were heroes. Everybody loves a good conflagration, and whenever a New York building started burning the buffs would be called and crowds of New Yorkers would turn out to cheer them on. People would travel across the city just to see a good fire, and schoolboys would become aficionados of the buffs’ techniques for putting them out. These devoted New York schoolboys became known as buffs. Thus the New York Sun said, in 1903, that:

The buffs are men and boys whose love of fire, fire-fighting and firemen is a predominant characteristic.

And that’s why to this day you have film buffs and music buffs and other such expert buffalos.

On the far side of New York state, beside the Niagara River, is a whole city called Buffalo, which is a bit odd as there aren’t any bison there, and never have been. However, the Niagara River is very pretty, and the best guess about the origins of the city’s name is that Buffalo is a corruption of the French beau fleuve, or beautiful river. But imagine if there were bison in the city of Buffalo. Pigeons in London are called London pigeons. Girls in California are called California girls. So any bison that you found in Buffalo would have to be called Buffalo buffalos.

Buffalos are big beasts and it’s probably best not to get into an argument with one. That’s why there’s an American slang verb to buffalo meaning to bully. This means that if you bullied bison from that large city on the Niagara River, you would be buffaloing Buffalo buffalos.

But you can go further, and a linguist at the University of Buffalo did. He worked out that if bison from his native city, who were bullied by other bison from his native city, went and took their frustration out on still other bison from his native city, then:

Confused? The grammar is easier if you compare it to this version:

It’s the longest grammatically correct sentence in the English language that uses only one word. Word buffs love it.