Butt naked

The phrase "butt naked" has long made my blood boil. (There are certain "errors" that just do it.) I hear it and suppress the urge to scream: "It's buck naked. Buck naked!"

And so I found this post at Language Log all the more interesting. There's talk that the "buck" in question may actually derive from "butt": (as "stark naked" comes from the older "start naked").

Mark Liberman quotes the Dictionary of American Regional English saying: "BUCK NAKED - adjective. Also buck-ass naked, buck-born ~, stark buck ~. Origin uncertain, but perhaps alteration of butt/buttocks. Entirely unclothed." And the American Heritage Dictionary (perhaps echoing DARE, Liberman says) has "Etymology: buck- (perhaps alteration of butt) + naked."

Many wordsmiths argue that "buck" is shortened from "buckskin," as "buff" came from "buffalo leather." Michael Quinion writes:

Buff leather was a characteristic light colour, not unlike that of the skin of Europeans exposed to the sun, so it soon led to the expression to be in the buff, or naked. Thomas Dekker is first recorded as using it in 1602: “I go in stag, in buff” (the first part of that line brings to mind the much later expression buck naked, from buckskin, a similar sort of derivation).

In any case, the jury's out. I'd still change "butt naked" to "buck naked" if the occasion arose.

But it's a nice chicken-and-egg lesson.