butter up

British  

verb

1. (tr, adverb) to flatter

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butter up Idioms  

1. Excessively praise or flatter someone, usually to gain a favor. For example, If you butter up Dad, he'll let you borrow the car. This term transfers the oily, unctuous quality of butter to lavish praise. [c. 1700]

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Example Sentences

To get ahead, you can make the marinara base and roasted garlic butter up to a couple days before.

From Seattle Times • May 8, 2022

Food prices are climbing sharply in Algeria, where shoppers say cooking oil and milk are so scarce that you need to butter up shopkeepers to get any.

From BBC • Mar. 28, 2022

The company’s prepaid Connect plans launched in 2020 and were part of T-Mobile’s efforts to butter up regulators to allow its massive merger with Sprint to go through.

From The Verge • Mar. 21, 2022

Meantime, staffers at Rikers Island are apparently eagerly awaiting Weinstein’s arrival from Bellevue and say they won’t be giving him any special treatment — no matter how much he tries to butter up the guards.

From Fox News • Feb. 25, 2020

There was no doubt that he was trying to butter up Dad; he even started to laugh like him, a Santa Claus, Jr., with his “Ho, ho, ho.”

From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou