To clip a sawbuck off the table

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
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Hello,

I just heard this phrase:

He clipped a sawbuck off the table.

I worked out its meaning with help from a dictionary, but I was wondering if a native speaker would understand it, or is it too slangy for a native speaker?

Thanks!

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Itā€™s too slangy for me, but perhaps an American such as @NearlyNapping or @Arinker could help.

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Thanks!
I guess it IS too slangy and Iā€™d do well not to use it to avoid being misunderstoodā€¦

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Stealing a $10.00 bill from the coffee table.

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I have not heard this before. What @Katfox said makes sense though. Iā€™ve heard the word ā€œclipā€ used for steal, although itā€™s probably been a few decades since Iā€™ve heard it. Iā€™m not sure if Iā€™ve heard sawbuck used for a ten dollar bill or not.

Yea, itā€™s kind of a waste of time trying to learn this one. You will likely never run into in in the real world. If you used it around native speakers they probably wouldnā€™t know what you were talking about. On the other hand, this might be something regional.

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I donā€™t believe believe Iā€™ve heard of clip as a verb. I have heard of a ā€œclip jointā€ for a dishonest establishment.

I have heard of sawbuck, though I thought it was a 5 dollar bill. Turns out it is a ten, so named because a sawbuck used in cutting timber has a ā€œXā€ shape, like the Roman numeral. And, of course, there is double sawbuck ($20). Both terms I associate with pre-1940.

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Iā€™ve found something that might shed some light on why a 10 dollar bill was called ā€˜sawbuckā€™ too:

Did you know it has been suggested that the word sabbath came to mean a ten dollar bill because the x-shaped ends of a sawbuck look like the roman numeral for ten? This explanation is problematic because earliest known use of sawbuck in print from 1850 refers to a 10 bill not a sawhorse. Why is $5 called ā€˜a finā€™?

Fin as for Five. Give your grandparents a great surprise by calling a five dollars bill ā€˜a Finā€™. This was the dubbed nickname for the note in the 19th and early 20th century, a name that comes from the German-Yiddish language. In Yiddish fin means 5. Take our lead.

Why is a dollar a buck?

Buck is an informal reference to one dollar that may trace its origins to the American colonial period deerskins, (buckskins) were commonly traded for goods the buck also refers to the us dollar as a currency that can be used both domestically and internationally.

What is a five dollar bill called?

All five dollars bills issued today are Federal Reserve Notes. The five dollars bill is sometimes nicknamed ā€œa finā€. The term has German-Yiddish roots and is remotely related to the English 5 but it is far less common today than it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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To me a sawhorse and sawbuck are two different things.

As a carpenter I used sawhorses on a daily basis. A sawbuck is X-shaped. The V at the top holds round longs to prevent them from rolling away. A sawhorse has a flat top that is used as a work surface when cutting flat lumber, plywood, etc. The angle on a sawbuck would make cutting limber very difficult.

So a sawbuck can not easily be used to cut lumber, and a sawhorse can not easily be used to cut round logs. They have different work surfaces for two different kinds of material.

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