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pass the buck

To shift blame from oneself to another person: “Passing the buck is a way of life in large bureaucracies.” ( See the buck stops here .)

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Idioms and Phrases

Shift responsibility or blame elsewhere, as in She's always passing the buck to her staff; it's time she accepted the blame herself . This expression dates from the mid-1800s, when in a poker game a piece of buckshot or another object was passed around to remind a player that he was the next dealer. It acquired its present meaning by about 1900.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

That made me start thinking, well, is there any way we can distinguish the good or bad accountability sink, or arrangements where someone is actually doing something necessary versus someone just trying to pass the buck.

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Not everyone was ready to let Bondi pass the buck, though.

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His first appearance was on Say the Word in 1997, and other credits include Pass the Buck, Breakaway and Two Tribes.

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Ms Ford said that response was "a terrible way of trying to pass the buck onto the victims".

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The collective angst has so far not resulted in a massive protest and, as the Supreme Court once observed, politicians just “pass the buck” and wait for the season to get over.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

pass rush pass the hat

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