This expression comes to us from a game of poker. In an old English card game a buck knife (a pocketknife made from a buck horn) — or "buck" — was passed from player to player to show whose turn it was to chip in. The procedure was adopted in poker and a "buck" was passed from player to player to indicate whose turn it was to deal (or assume responsibility for) the cards.

Through time, the figurative idea of passing responsibility (or blame) on to someone else grew out of this.

The phrase "the buck stops here," meaning "I accept the ultimate responsibility for my actions or those beneath me in the organization," became widely used during the presidency of Harry S. Truman. Being a poker payer, President Truman placed a sign on his desk in the Oval Office that read: "The buck stops here."

Some suggest that our word buck — in the sense of a dollar — has the same origin. They suggest that the pocketknife that was placed on the table was eventually replaced by a silver dollar, which was also called a "buck." But this cannot be proven with any degree of certainty.