butternut
Americannoun
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Also called white walnut. the edible oily nut of an American tree, Juglans cinerea, of the walnut family.
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the tree itself.
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the light-brown wood of this tree, used for making furniture.
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the light-brown color resulting from a dye made from this tree.
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U.S. History. a Confederate soldier or partisan, especially one whose uniform was dyed with an extract from this tree.
noun
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a walnut tree, Juglans cinerea of E North America Compare black walnut
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the oily edible egg-shaped nut of this tree
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the hard brownish-grey wood of this tree
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the bark of this tree or an extract from it, formerly used as a laxative
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a brownish colour or dye
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short for butternut pumpkin
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of butternut
An Americanism dating back to 1735–45; so called from the nut's oiliness
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Other cheese options include freshly grated gruyère, a classic choice for French Onion soup; Parmigiano-Reggiano, which is perfect in tomato-forward pasta soups; and crumbly goat cheese, which complements butternut squash soup or pumpkin bisque.
From Salon ● Jun. 13, 2026
Among them were a chicken tikka pie, a pie flower salmon chaï-matchaï, a Caribbean-style jerk spiced turkey pie with cranberry sauce and a butternut and malabar pie.
From BBC ● Mar. 7, 2025
"We've hidden in there courgettes, butternut squash, onions and we've roasted it as well so they can have some on the side as well."
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2024
In fact, the taste was described as “almost sweet,” akin to a butternut squash mac and cheese and not the Kraft Original.
From Salon ● Mar. 30, 2024
There is a butternut squash with two bites out of it scootching down the aisle of Health Goddess.
From "Invisible Inkling" by Emily Jenkins
Beige-skinned and oblong, they look more like bloated butternuts than anything you’d carve to make a jack-o’-lantern.
From New York Times ● Nov. 12, 2021
He’s also a sometime farmer whose butternuts have won first place so often at the Washington County Fair that no one else bothers to enter anymore.
From New York Times ● Nov. 18, 2011
"We know this because of the butternuts," she says.
From Time Magazine Archive
He used to sell fish at one penny each and butternuts at two for a penny.
From History of New Brunswick by Fisher, Peter
Imitating nature, the nurseryman lays his walnuts and butternuts in a bed of sand or gravel, one layer above another, and lets the rain and the cold do the rest.
From Trees Worth Knowing by Rogers, Julia Ellen
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.
