especially: a large North American bison (Bison bison) that has a dense coat of dark brown fur with a shaggy mane on the head and lower neck, short hollow horns, and heavy forequarters with a large muscular hump over the shoulders and that formerly was abundant in North America but is now reduced to small populations of plains and prairies chiefly of the central U.S. and Canada : american bison compare european bison
(2)
: the flesh of the buffalo used as food
2
: any of several suckers (genus Ictiobus) found mostly in the Mississippi River valley
Verb I'm not some newcomer that you can buffalo with that nonsense. in this debate I refuse to be buffaloed by a flurry of irrelevant issues
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
Now the Eastern Shoshone have 65 buffalo and the Northern Arapaho 32. David Kelly, Los Angeles Times, 21 Mar. 2022 An American buffalo is on the loose, casually roaming around Chicago's suburbs looking for a new home. Scott Gleeson, USA TODAY, 10 Dec. 2021 In 2016, Canada allowed 100 buffalo to be returned to the Blackfeet Reservation. Michelle Miller, CBS News, 25 Nov. 2021 An effort to bring wild buffalo to the Great Plains aims to restore one of the world’s most endangered landscapes and increase climate resilience. Louise Johns, Wired, 12 June 2021 Others have a Columbian buffalo mozzarella that Frankel likes. Michael Russell, oregonlive, 16 Oct. 2020 Jaguars, sloths, tapirs, horses, coyotes, buffalo, rabbits, and squirrels up and down the North American continent are now spared from screwworms too. Sarah Zhang, The Atlantic, 26 May 2020 Make that the big ten—lion, my face, leopard, my face, rhino, my face, elephant, my face, buffalo, my face. Colin Nissan, The New Yorker, 18 Dec. 2019 Today, a lot of paneer in India is made with a mix of buffalo and less-expensive cow’s milk. Leena Trivedi-grenier, SFChronicle.com, 15 May 2020
Verb
Eva has the senior management in our company completely buffaloed.Anchorage Daily News, 18 Feb. 2020 How far must buffalo roam to fulfill their ecological role?National Geographic, 16 Jan. 2020 See More
Word History
Etymology
Noun
Italian bufalo & Spanish búfalo, from Late Latin bufalus, alteration of Latin bubalus, from Greek boubalos African gazelle