Sawbucks

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A slang term for dollar bills, often used to denote cash in general
2. A reference to a financial transaction or payment in an informal context
3. A casual term referring to money that can be easily spent or earned

Etymology: The "X" on a ten-dollar bill has a surprising ancestor: a carpenter's sawhorse. "Sawbuck" originally named the wooden frame used to hold timber steady while it was cut. The "buck" half comes from Dutch "zaagbok", meaning "saw-buck" or sawhorse, and English speakers combined it with "saw" to produce the same literal sense. The word was a calque, meaning English borrowed the idea and rebuilt it from its own parts rather than taking the Dutch word whole. The money sense rests on a visual pun. The Roman numeral X, which stands for ten, looks like two crossed legs of a sawhorse, and the frame's X-shaped supports gave the nickname to the bill. "Sawbucks" is simply the plural, used for more than one such bill.

Synonyms: dollars, bucks, cash