Buckshee

Origin of: Buckshee

Buckshee

Buckshee meaning gratis, free or for nothing is the modern variant, dating from c.1916, of the original baksheesh, which dates from the early 17th century. As is the case with all words borrowed from foreign languages, there are many spelling variants, backsheesh, backshish, bakshish, backshee, bakshee, bukshee, bukshi. They all stem from the Persian bakhshish “gift” and similar words in Arabic, Urdu, Turkish, and Hindi. The British military first picked up the word in India during the early 17th century where bukshi or bukshee, besides meaning a gift, was also the name for the paymaster in the native Indian states. The word was revived in its current form by troops in the Middle East during the First World War.