Brewer's: Buck-basket

A linen-basket. To buck is to wash clothes in lye; and a buck is one whose clothes are buck, or nicely got up. When Cade says his mother was “descended from the Lacies,” two men overhear him, and say,

“She was a pedlar's daughter, but not being able to travel with her furred pack, she washes bucks here at home.” (2 Henry VI., iv. 2.) (German, beuchen, to steep clothes in lye; beuche, clothes so steeped. However, compare “bucket,” a diminutive of the Anglo-Saxon buc.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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