Question

Pass the Buck to pass on or make another person accept responsibility or blame for something one does not want to accept for his or her own

Accepted Answer

You've got to make the decision yourself. You can't pass the buck on this one. In a 19th-century American poker game, "buck" was a piece of buckshot (a shotgun pellet) or a pocketknife with a buckhorn handle. It was passed to you if you were the next dealer. By 1900, "passing the buck" meant shifting responsibility for something to another person. In 1949 President Harry Truman put a sign on his desk that read "The Buck Stops Here." That meant that he was accepting personal responsibility for all decisions that needed to be made and all actions that needed to be taken. He wasn't going to direct his problems to anybody else.

Idiom	Pass the Buck
Example	You've got to make the decision yourself. You can't pass the buck on this one.
Meaning	to pass on or make another person accept responsibility or blame for something one does not want to accept for his or her own
Origin	In a 19th-century American poker game, "buck" was a piece of buckshot (a shotgun pellet) or a pocketknife with a buckhorn handle. It was passed to you if you were the next dealer. By 1900, "passing the buck" meant shifting responsibility for something to another person. In 1949 President Harry Truman put a sign on his desk that read "The Buck Stops Here." That meant that he was accepting personal responsibility for all decisions that needed to be made and all actions that needed to be taken. He wasn't going to direct his problems to anybody else.

Pass Buck Responsibility Make Accept Meant Needed Decision