American Bison Are Not Buffalo

A bison is a large humped bovine with a shaggy mane. The American animal is a bison, not a buffalo: true buffalo are the African cape buffalo and the Asian water buffalo, and European settlers simply applied a familiar word to an unfamiliar animal. The name stuck so hard that a city, a nickel and a song all carry it, and correcting it is now a lost cause.

• A large bovine. *A herd of bison.*
• American bison — the plains animal. *American bison survive in reserves.*
• European bison — the wisent. *The European bison of Białowieża.*
• Plural — bison, unchanged. *Forty bison.*
• Buffalo — a different group of animals. *Water buffalo.*

Word forms

• Bison were reduced to a few hundred animals.Nineteenth-century near-extinction.
• The plural of bison is bison.Grammar.
• European bison were reintroduced from captive stock.Conservation.

Bison or buffalo?

• Bison — North America and Europe, humped with a heavy mane
• Cape buffalo — Africa, with fused horn bosses
• Water buffalo — Asia, domesticated across much of the continent
• Not closely related despite both being bovines
• The American misnaming dates from early European settlers and is now permanent in speech

Latin *bison*, a wild ox, probably from a Germanic source. English took it in the 1600s; the misapplied *buffalo* is older in American use.