Pass the Buck

(i.e. Shift responsibility onto someone else.) In some card games, a marker called a 'buck' is put in front of the dealer to remind players who is the dealer. When the turn is someone else's, the card is put in front of them-thus, the buck' is passed'.

The original buck' may have been a buckthorn knife. Or, in the Old West, a silver dollar-hence the modern use of the word buck' to denote a dollar.

The expression, The buck stops here' - famously invented by President Harry S Truman and inscribed on a plaque which he kept on his desk -follows on from all this. Truman was a keen poker-player.

Source "Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins", Nigel Rees