butt
/bʌt/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms butts butting butted but Butte
- noun (Canada, US, Cumbria, Philippines) The buttocks or anus (used as a minced oath in idiomatic expressions; less objectionable than arse/ass). “Get up off your butt and get to work.”
- noun The whole buttocks and pelvic region that includes one's private parts. “I can see your butt.”
- noun (metonymic, colloquial) Body; self. “Get your butt to the car.”
- noun (leather trades) The thickest and stoutest part of tanned oxhides, used for soles of boots, harness, trunks.
- noun A used cigarette.
- noun A piece of land left unplowed at the end of a field.
- noun (obsolete, West Country) Hassock.
- noun (US) A crust end-piece of a loaf of bread.
- verb To join at the butt, end, or outward extremity; to terminate; to be bounded; to abut.
- verb (transitive) To strike bluntly, particularly with the head.
- verb (intransitive) To strike bluntly with the head. “Rams butt at other males during mating season.”
- verb (transitive, intransitive, eastern Canada, parts of the northeastern US) To cut in line (in front of someone). “Teacher! He just butted me!”
- noun A push, thrust, or sudden blow, given by the head; a head butt. “Be careful in the pen, that ram can knock you down with a butt.”
- noun A thrust in fencing.
- noun (English units) An English measure of capacity for liquids, containing 126 wine gallons which is one-half tun.
- noun A wooden cask for storing wine, usually containing 126 gallons.
- noun (Northern England) Any of various flatfish such as sole, plaice or turbot.
- noun (dated, West Country and Ireland) A heavy two-wheeled cart.
- noun (dated, West Country and Ireland) A three-wheeled cart resembling a wheelbarrow.
- noun The shoulder of an animal, especially the portion above the picnic, as a cut of meat.
Synonyms
boot heel butt joint laughing stock pipe butty butt end goat laughingstock stooge buttocks nates arse backside bum buns can fundament hindquarters hind end keister posterior prat rear rear end rump stern seat tail tail end
Etymology
From Middle English but, butte (“goal, mark, butt of land”), from Old English byt, bytt (“small piece of land”) and *butt (attested in diminutive Old English buttuc (“end, small piece of land”) > English buttock), from Proto-West Germanic *butt, from Proto-Germanic *buttaz (“end, piece”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰnós (“bottom”), later thematic variant of Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰmḗn ~ *bʰudʰn-, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ- (“deep”).
Cognate with Norwegian butt (“stump, block”), Faroese buttur (“wooden block”), Icelandic bútur (“piece, fragment”), Low German butt (“blunt, clumsy”). Influenced by Old French but, butte (“but, mark”), ultimately from the same Germanic source. Compare also Albanian bythë (“buttocks”), Ancient Greek πυθμήν (puthmḗn, “bottom of vessel”), Latin fundus (“bottom”) and Sanskrit बुध्न (budhná, “bottom”), from the same Proto-Indo-European root. Related to bottom, boot.
From Middle English butten, from Anglo-Norman buter, boter (“to push, butt, strike”), from Frankish *bautan (“to hit, beat”), from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to beat, push”). Cognate with Old English bēatan (“to beat”). More at beat.
From late Middle English bote, but, butte (“wine cask”), of disputed origin. Probably (1) from Anglo-Norman but, from Old French bot (“barrel, wine-skin”), Late Latin buttis (“cask”); (2) alternatively, a later form of Middle English bitte, bit, butte (“leather bottle”), from Old English bytt, byt, from Proto-West Germanic *buttjā, from Vulgar Latin *buttia and thus a doublet of boccia.
From Middle English but, butte, botte (“flounder; plaice; turbot”), possibly derived from sense 1 (“blunt end”), meaning "blunt-headed fish." Compare Dutch bot and the second element of English halibut.
Cognate with West Frisian bot, German Low German Butt, German Butt, Butte, Swedish butta.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A limit; a bound; a goal; the extreme bound; the end. Here is my journey's end, here my butt And very sea mark of my utmost sail. Shak.
- noun The thicker end of anything. See But.
- verb To join at the butt, end, or outward extremity; to terminate; to be bounded; to abut. [Written also but.]
- verb To thrust the head forward; to strike by thrusting the head forward, as an ox or a ram. [See Butt, n.]
Etymology [F. but butt, aim (cf. butte knoll), or bout, OF. bot, end, extremity, fr. boter, buter, to push, butt, strike, F. bouter; of German origin; cf. OHG. bozan, akin to E. beat. See Beat, v. t.]
Etymology [OE. butten, OF. boter to push, F. bouter. See Butt an end, and cf. Boutade.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “butt”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details