butter
- the fatty portion of milk, separating as a soft whitish or yellowish solid when milk or cream is agitated or churned.
- this substance, processed for cooking and table use.
- any of various other soft spreads for bread: apple butter; peanut butter.
- any of various substances of butterlike consistency, as various metallic chlorides, and certain vegetable oils solid at ordinary temperatures.
- to put butter on or in; spread or grease with butter.
- to apply a liquefied bonding material to (a piece or area), as mortar to a course of bricks.
- Metalworking. to cover (edges to be welded together) with a preliminary surface of the weld metal.
- butter up, Informal. to flatter someone in order to gain a favor: He suspected that they were buttering him up when everyone suddenly started being nice to him.
Origin of butter
Examples from the Web for butter
Contemporary Examples
In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
While the beans are cooling and drying, melt the butter in a saute pan over medium heat.
“Butter has always been a healthy part of the diet in almost every culture; butter is a traditional food,” Asprey says.
Now, his new book “The Bulletproof Diet,” claims to offer a weight loss solution that lets you have your butter, and eat it too.
Add chocolate and butter to the bowl and melt, stirring to combine.
Historical Examples
She tried to talk to Mr. Brailsford when he handed her the tea and bread and butter.
Life and Death of Harriett FreanMay Sinclair
Add the milk, butter, salt, and pepper and return the clams.
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
Roll in the white of egg and then in flour and sauté in butter.
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
Add the butter, and when it has melted remove from the heat.
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 4Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
Of what value are milk, cream, and butter in the making of candy?
Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 5Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
butter
- an edible fatty whitish-yellow solid made from cream by churning, for cooking and table use
- (as modifier)butter icing Related adjective: butyraceous
- any substance with a butter-like consistency, such as peanut butter or vegetable butter
- look as if butter wouldn't melt in one's mouth to look innocent, although probably not so
- to put butter on or in
- to flatter
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for butter
n.
Old English butere "butter," general West Germanic (cf. Old Frisian, Old High German butera, German Butter, Dutch boter), an early loan-word from Latin butyrum "butter" (source of Italian burro, Old French burre, French beurre), from Greek boutyron, perhaps literally "cow-cheese," from bous "ox, cow" (see cow (n.)) + tyros "cheese;" but this might be a folk etymology of a Scythian word.
The product was used from an early date in India, Iran and northern Europe, but not in ancient Greece and Rome. Herodotus described it (along with cannabis) among the oddities of the Scythians. Butter-knife attested from 1818.
v.
Old English buterian "spread butter on," from the same source as butter (n.). Figurative meaning "to flatter lavishly" is by 1798 (with up (adv.), in Connelly's Spanish-English dictionary, p.413). Related: Buttered; buttering.
butter
(bŭt′ər)- A soft yellowish or whitish emulsion of butterfat, water, air, and sometimes salt, churned from milk or cream and processed for use in cooking and as a food.
- A soft solid having at room temperature a consistency like that of butter.
Idioms and Phrases with butter
butter
In addition to the idioms beginning with butter
- butter up
- butter wouldn't melt in one's mouth
also see:
- bread and butter
- bread-and-butter letter
- know which side of bread is buttered