Pass the Buck

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🗓️ Idiom: Pass the buck (verb)

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💬 Meaning

• To shift responsibility to someone else instead of taking it yourself.
• To avoid blame or decision-making by making another person handle it.

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🧠 Example Sentences

• The manager tried to pass the buck to his assistant when the report was late.
• Good leaders take responsibility instead of passing the buck.
• She accused her colleague of passing the buck during the meeting.

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🏛️ Origin

The phrase comes from 19th-century poker games in the United States. A marker, often a knife with a buckhorn handle, was passed to show whose turn it was to deal. If a player did not want the responsibility, they could “pass the buck” to the next person. Over time, it came to mean avoiding responsibility.

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📝 Practice Exercises

1. Fill in the blank:
Instead of solving the problem, he tried to ________ the buck to someone else.

Answer

pass

2. Choose the correct meaning of “pass the buck”:
a) To give money to someone
b) To avoid responsibility by giving it to someone else
c) To promote teamwork

Answer

b) To avoid responsibility by giving it to someone else

3. Change the sentence using “pass the buck”:
“The director avoided responsibility and made the manager deal with the issue.”

Answer

The director passed the buck and made the manager deal with the issue.

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ℹ️ Other Useful Pages

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📚 Learning Resources

👉 Management and Leadership Idioms
👉 Business English Idioms List

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