| 1. | the fatty portion of milk, separating as a soft whitish or yellowish solid when milk or cream is agitated or churned. |
| 2. | this substance, processed for cooking and table use. |
| 3. | any of various other soft spreads for bread: apple butter; peanut butter. |
| 4. | any of various substances of butterlike consistency, as various metallic chlorides, and certain vegetable oils solid at ordinary temperatures. |
| 5. | to put butter on or in; spread or grease with butter. |
| 6. | to apply a liquefied bonding material to (a piece or area), as mortar to a course of bricks. |
| 7. | Metalworking. to cover (edges to be welded together) with a preliminary surface of the weld metal. |
| 8. | 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. |

butter
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butter but·ter (bŭt'ər)
n.
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.
Butter
(Heb. hemah), curdled milk (Gen. 18:8; Judg. 5:25; 2 Sam. 17:29), or butter in the form of the skim of hot milk or cream, called by the Arabs kaimak, a semi-fluid (Job 20:17; 29:6; Deut. 32:14). The words of Prov. 30:33 have been rendered by some "the pressure [not churning] of milk bringeth forth cheese."
butter
In addition to the idioms beginning with butter, also see bread and butter; bread-and-butter letter; know which side of bread is buttered.