[Anglicized form of Du. WATERBOK: see BUCK sb.1 1 e.] A species of antelope, Cobus ellipsiprymnus, found in watered districts in central South Africa; an animal of this species which is marked with a characteristic white ring round the buttocks. Sometimes applied to other species, as the SING-SING (C. defassa).
1850. R. G. Cumming, Hunter’s Life S. Afr. (1902), 120/2. I … rode up to the banks of the river with my dogs to seek for water-buck.
1876. T. E. Buckley, in Proc. Zool. Soc., 284. Cobus ellipsiprymnus. (The Waterbuck.) A common species, extending from the Zulu country through the east of Equatorial Africa into Abyssinia…. It seems never to be found far from water, through which it does not hesitate to go when alarmed.
1910. Roosevelt, Afr. Game Trails, ix. 215. Kermit killed a waterbuck of a kind new to us—the sing-sing. Ibid., x. 227. I spent a couple of days trying for sing-sing waterbuck on the edge of the papyrus.
attrib. 1863. W. C. Baldwin, Afr. Hunting, iii. 87. I had two good chances at buffaloes,… one at a waterbuck ram. Ibid., v. 125. A waterbuck skin.
1910. Roosevelt, Afr. Game Trails, x. 228. I killed a fine waterbuck cow at a hundred yards.
