butt – English noun declension

English noun forms of butt

Noun: butt
Singularbutt
Pluralbutts

Sample Sentences

  • Get up off your butt and get to work.
  • I can see your butt.
  • Get your butt to the car.
  • We can't chat today. I have to get my butt to work before I'm late.
  • I walked around, picking butts from the street. [1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, chapter 10, in On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC, part 2:]
  • c. 1850-1860, Alexander Mansfield Burrill, A New Law Dictionary and Glossary
  • The hay was growing upon headlands and butts in cornfields.
  • She was hit in the face with the butt of a shotgun.
  • I put out my hand and felt the meat-chopper hanging to the wall. In a flash I was after him. [...] With one last touch of humanity I turned the blade back and struck him with the butt. [1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 231:]
  • […] when the sun gets round to the butt of the wind, the change, if any is coming, is then to be expected. [1865, Arthur Kavanagh, The Cruise of the R.Y.S. Eva, page 62:]
  • […] 'the butt' of the wind, the wind will increase or continue. When the sky is light and clear in 'the butt' of the wind, the wind will die away. A strong wind which changes round with the sun E to S to W (clockwise) will die away, and[…] [2013 April 16, G. W. Maunsell, The Fisherman's Vade Mecum - A Compendium of Precepts, Counsel, Knowledge and Experience in Most Matters Pertaining to Fishing for Trout, Sea Trout, S, Read Books Ltd, →ISBN:]
  • Here is my journey's end, here is my butt / And very sea-mark of my utmost sail. [c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene ii], line 267:]
  • archery butt (archery target)
  • To which is fixed, as an aim or butt[…] [1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii], line 186:]
  • The inhabitants of all cities and towns were ordered to make butts, and to keep them in repair, under a penalty of twenty shillings per month, and to exercise themselves in shooting at them on holidays. [1786, Francis Grose, A Treatise on Ancient Armour and Weapons, page 37:]
  • The groom his fellow groom at butts defies, / And bends his bow, and levels with his eyes. [1697, Virgil, “The Second Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:]
  • He's usually the butt of their jokes.
  • I played a sentence or two at my butt, which I thought very smart. [1711 September 30 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “WEDNESDAY, September 20, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 175; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, 1853, →OCLC:]
  • The man was one of the most conspicuously infamous sights in the imperial court, bred, as he had been, in a shoemaker's shop, of a deformed person and vulgar wit, originally introduced as a butt. [1876, Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb, Annals of Tacitus., translation of original by Cornelius Tacitus, page 300:]
  • archery butt (archery ground)

Etymology

1. 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”).
2. Cognate with Norwegian butt (“stump, 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.
3. PIE word
4. *bʰudʰmḗn See: Middle English Nouns 'but', Old English Nouns 'byt', Old English Nouns 'buttuc', English Nouns 'buttock', Icelandic Nouns 'bútur', Ancient Greek Nouns 'πυθμήν', Latin Nouns 'fundus'.

Verbs referencing "butt"

Dutch Nouns bot, German Nouns Butt, Finnish Nouns spaddu, Hungarian Nouns puttony.