Meaning
To flatter someone or lavish them with attentive kindness in the hope of winning favour or a specific benefit. The tone is usually teasing or faintly disapproving, because it implies that the praise is calculated and self-interested rather than spontaneous. Informal; nearly always carries a whiff of cynicism about the flatterer's motives. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A widely repeated story ties the phrase to an ancient Hindu custom of hurling balls of ghee at statues of deities to win favour, but investigators have found no record that butter was ever thrown in Indian ritual and no evidence linking any Hindu practice to the English idiom; it is a folk etymology repeated mainly by sources citing one another. The documented lineage is domestic: the Oxford English Dictionary records 'butter' meaning flattering or ingratiating speech from 1618, and the verb 'butter up', to flatter lavishly, is attested by 1798. The figure simply extends buttering bread - praise, like butter, smeared on smoothly to make a person more agreeable.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- be buttering someone up
- butter him/her up
- butter up
- butter up to someone
Usage Examples
- He spent the whole kickoff meeting buttering up the programme director, hoping to land a place on the redesign team.
- Do not think you can butter me up with flat whites and cinnamon buns; I still need that inventory report by Friday.
- She buttered up the panel so charmingly that even the opposing coaches were smiling by the end of her pitch.