1650–60, < North American French; French: low hill, mound, Old French: landmark, target, apparently feminine derivative of but butt 2
A butte is a flat-topped hill that stands alone in a relatively flat area. There are many buttes in the Southwest and Western United States. The dramatic hills in the background of old Western films are often buttes — the director John Ford featured Arizona's Mitten Buttes in seven of his movies. Geographers distinguish between a butte and a mesa, a larger, flat-topped hill: a butte's top is narrower than it is tall, and a mesa's is wider than its height. The explorers Lewis and Clark are responsible for introducing this French word to English speakers.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“As such with limited material capex on the horizon and Black Butte potentially offloaded, we expect material returns from August,” analyst Levi Spry says.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 27, 2026
General funding was also received from Red Butte Garden and the Natural History Museum of Utah.
From Science Daily • Jan. 25, 2026
Navan, the corporate travel and expense-management company that went public in October, declined 13% after reporting a wider third-quarter loss and revealing that Chief Financial Officer Amy Butte would be stepping down Jan. 9.
From Barron's • Dec. 16, 2025
In June, Air Force Two landed in Butte, Montana, where Vice President JD Vance transferred to a motorcade of black SUVs that shuttled him south to a sprawling cattle operation near Yellowstone National Park.
From Salon • Dec. 4, 2025
Butte was a toss-up town in what our campaign hoped could be a toss-up state.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
