A US 1861 ten-dollar demand banknote, with pictures of Abraham Lincoln, Lady Liberty, and an eagle on the obverse side and a large “X” on the reverse.
9 May 2022
A sawbuck is a wooden trestle with two X-shaped pairs of legs connected by crossbars, on which a piece of lumber to be cut can be laid. It is also slang for a US ten-dollar bill. The literal sense of word is a borrowing from either the Dutch zaagbok or the German sägebock (saw-goat), and the slang sense comes from the large Roman numeral X (ten) which was printed on early US ten-dollar banknotes, wordplay on both the X and buck meaning a form of currency.
A clipped buck, referring to the trestle, appears as early as 1816 in a letter by James Kirke Paulding:
The poor duke gradually descended into the vale of poverty. His white dimity could not last for ever, and he gradually went to seed, and withered like a stately onion. In fine he was obliged to work, and that ruined him for nature had made him a gentleman.—And a gentleman is the caput mortuum of human nature, out of which you can make nothing under heaven—but a gentleman. He first carried wild game about to sell; but this business not answering, he bought himself a buck and saw, and became a redoubtable sawyer. But he could not get over his old propensity—and whenever a lady passed where he was at work, the little man was always observed to stop his saw, lean his knee on the stick of wood, and gaze at her till she was quite out of sight. Thus, like Antony, he sacrificed the world for a woman—for he soon lost all employment he was always so long about his work. The last time I saw him he was equipped in the genuine livery of poverty, leaning against a tree on the Battery, and admiring the ladies.
A sawbuck; a wooden trestle with two X-shaped pairs of legs connected by crossbars, on which a piece of lumber to be cut can be laid.
And we see it again in this 11 January 1825 piece in the Wilmington, Delaware American Watchman:
That all religions are tolerated by the laws is true; but not exactly by public opinion. Zekiel Stanford, came to complain of Teary [sic] O’Rourke. He was sawing a load of wood in his vocation patiently and honestly on christmas day, because wood is necessary on christmas, which always falls in winter; Terry was coming from church, and swore that no man should work on christmas; by the powers he would not tolerate such things; so he despoiled poor Zekiel of his buck and saw, threw the wood about, and Hays, Junr. interfering and arresting Terry, he was rescued by his companions, but after sundry hustlings he succeeded in securing his man, and lodging him in Bridewell. Terry swore there was no freedom in this country, in locking up a man because he protected religion.—New York Advocate.
And we see the slang sense, referring to the banknote, by 23 August 1834 in the New York Evening Post, in an article about the then-ongoing political fight over the Bank of the United States, which was opposed by President Andrew Jackson:
Resolved, That we cherish a decided preference for Jackson Gold over the bills of the United States Bank—and we look upon a Jackson Eagle with vastly more complacency, than upon a paper (X) “Saw-buck” from the Rag-factory of Biddle, Baring & Co.
Sources:
“Christmas.” American Watchman and Delaware Advertiser (Wilmington), 11 January 1825, 3. Library of Congress, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, 2022, s.v. sawbuck, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. sawbuck, n., buck, n.7.
“Ninth Ward.” Evening Post (New York), 23 August 1834, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Paulding, James Kirke. “Letter 17.” Letters from the South, Written During an Excursion in the Summer of 1816, vol. 1 of 2. New York: James Eastburn, 1817, 188–89. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://www.hathitrust.org/
Photo credits: wooden sawbuck, Kimsaka, 2012, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license; US banknote, 2013, National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History. Public domain image.