Definition
nounA soft, fatty foodstuff made by churning the cream of milk (generally cow's milk).
nounAny of various foodstuffs made from other foods or oils, similar in consistency to, eaten like or intended as a substitute for butter (preceded by the name of the food used to make it).
Sentence Examples
We make milk into cheese and butter.
Milk is made into butter and cheese.
Butter and line a 25 cm cake tin.
Word Origin & History
PIE word
*gʷṓws
Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *gʷṓws
Proto-Hellenic *gʷous
Ancient Greek βοῦς (boûs)
Proto-Indo-European *tewh₂-
Proto-Indo-European *-rós
Proto-Indo-European *tuh₂rós
Proto-Hellenic *tūrós
Ancient Greek τυρός (turós)
Ancient Greek βούτῡρον (boútūron)bor.
Latin būtȳrumbor.
Proto-West Germanic *buterā
Old English butere
Middle English buter
English butter
From Middle English buter, butter, from Old English butere, from Proto-West Germanic *buterā, from Latin būtȳrum, from Ancient Greek βούτῡρον (boútūron, “cow cheese”), compound of βοῦς (boûs, “ox, cow”) and τῡρός (tūrós, “cheese”).
Cognate with Dutch boter and German Butter.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Butters such as cocoa, illippe, kokum, mango, murumuru, sal (shorea) and shea occur naturally and are obtained directly from the plant."
— 2016 September 7, Elaine Stavert, Beauty Oils & Butter, GMC PUBLICATIONS LTD, →ISBN:
"Butters are triglycerides […]. Cocoa butter (Theobroma cacao) is used as an emollient in topical cosmetic formulations, […] South American and the Brazilian rainforest offer various plants with common butters used in the industry that include […] cupuaçu butter […] and murumuru butter from the murumuru palm tree (Astrocaryum murumuru). India is another source of many butters used in cosmetic products, including kokum butter extracted from the seeds of the Garcinia indica tree, mango butter from the Mangifera indica tree and shea butter[…]"
— 2019 April 5, Heather A.E. Benson, Michael S. Roberts, Vania Rodrigues Leite-Silva, Kenneth Walters, Cosmetic Formulation: Principles and Practice, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 227:
"That “Confessions” into “Nice and Slow” transition [at the Super Bowl LVIII halftime show] was buttah !"
— 2024 February 12, @OluBliss, X (post):
"[…] these animals lacked self-correcting mechanisms of the kind seen in modern head-butters such as goats and big-horn sheep that would have kept the tremendous forces aligned with the rest of the skeleton."
— 2005, David E. Fastovsky, David B. Weishampel, The Evolution and Extinction of the Dinosaurs, page 156: