"B" Word Origins

butterfingered

Origin

From butter + fingered (“having fingers (of the specified kind)”), an allusion to people tending to drop things because their hands are so slippery that they seem to be covered in butter.

butterfingers

Origin

From butter plus fingers — the idea that someone's hands are as slippery as if coated in butter.

butterfly

Old English

From Old English buterflēoge, literally "butter-fly." No one is fully sure why — theories range from the insect's yellowish color, an old belief that butterflies stole milk or butter, to a folk idea that they excreted a butter-like substance.

buttermilk

Middle English

From Middle English butter-melke, equivalent to butter plus milk.

butters

Origin

Originally a shortening of "butterface" ("nice body, but her face...") plus a slang -s ending.

butterscotch

Origin

From butter plus a form of "scotch" meaning "to score/nick" — describing how the hardened candy is scored to make it easy to break apart, not a reference to Scotland or scotch whisky.

Butterworth

Old English

From Old English butere ("butter") + worþ ("enclosure"); the Malaysian city is named after William John Butterworth.

buttery

Middle English

From Middle English buttry, from butter plus -y — though the storeroom sense actually traces to the same root as "bottle," not butter, despite the similar spelling.

buttface

Origin

From butt + face. Compare butthead and butterface.

butthead

Origin

From butt ("backside") plus head.

butthole

Origin

From butt plus hole.

butthurt

Origin

From butt + hurt. First use appears c. 1996 in the Usenet group alt.graffiti. See cite below.

buttinsky

Origin

From butt in (“to join a conversation or situation in which one is not welcome or invited, interject”) + -sky (a variant of -ski (suffix added to a word, name, or phrase to invoke Russianness, Polishness, or a more general Slavicness)), humorously modelled after Russian surnames, and originally and often used in the form of a surname.

buttlicker

Origin

From butt + licker.

buttload

Origin

From butt + load. Butt in this context may be possibly one or both of: * butt (“large wooden cask”) (Etymology 3) * butt (“two-wheeled cart”) (Etymology 5) Alternatively, the term may either be a corruption of English boatload or have been influenced by that term (except for the specific, West Country dialect sense). All senses above also synchronically reanalyzed as buttocksful.

buttock

Old English

From Old English buttuc ("end piece; short strip of land"), with the -ock ending making it a diminutive — literally "little end piece."

button

Old French

From Old French bouton ("bud, knob"), from bouter ("to push, thrust") — a button is literally something that "pushes" through a hole.

buttonhole

Origin

Originally "buttonhold" — a loop that held a button in place — later reshaped by folk etymology to end in "hole."

buttonhook

Origin

From button + hook.

buttress

Origin

From Old French ars bouterez (noun, literally “supporting arcs”), from bouterez (adjective), oblique plural of bouteret (rare in the singular), from Frankish *bôtan, from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to push”). Ultimately cognate with beat.

butty

Origin

Clipping of buttered sandwich or bun + -y. Compare Saterland Frisian Buutje (“buttered bread (sandwich)”).

butyraceous

Origin

From butyro- + -aceous.

buxom

Origin

From Middle English buxom, also ibucsum, ibuhsum (“bendsome, flexible, pliant, obedient”), from Old English bōcsum, *būhsum, *ġebūhsum (“bendsome, pliant, obedient”), from Proto-West Germanic *beuhsam, *beugsam, equivalent to bow (“to bend, bow at the waist”) + -some or buck (“to bend, buckle, kick”) + -some. Cognate with Scots bowsome (“compliant”), West Frisian bûgsum (“flexible, bendy”), Dutch buigzaam (“flexible, pliant”), German biegsam (“flexible, pliant”).

Buxton

Old English

From Old English būgan ("to bend") + stān ("stone").

buy

Old English

From Old English bycgan ("to buy, pay for, acquire"), an ancient Germanic verb with no certain root beyond that.

buycott

Origin

Blend of buy + boycott.

buying

Origin

From buy + -ing.

buyout

Origin

Deverbal from buy out.

Buys

Dutch

Borrowed from Dutch Buijs.

buzgut

Origin

From Cornish boos (“food, meal, fare”) + gut.

buzz

Origin

An imitative word — it simply mimics the humming sound bees and insects make.

buzzard

Latin

From Old French busard, likely from Latin buteo ("hawk").

buzzer

Origin

Formed from buzz + -er, "the thing that buzzes."

buzzkill

Origin

A compound of buzz ("a feeling of excitement") and kill — literally something that kills the buzz.

bwana

Arabic

Borrowed from Swahili bwana ("master"), itself from an Arabic word for "our father."

by

Old English

From Old English bī ("near, by, around"), an ancient Germanic preposition related to German bei and Dutch bij.

by the way

Old English

First appeared in the 10th century with literal meaning "by the side of the road", from Old English weġ (which became "way") meaning "road". Soon afterward (circa 1000) it came to mean "during one's journey". The figurative meaning developed in the mid-16th century, with the first instance of the modern meaning being from 1614.

bydweller

Origin

From by- + dweller.

bye

Origin

A shortened, informal variant of "goodbye," ultimately from "God be with you."

Bye, Felicia

English

From a minor character named Felisha in the 1995 American film Friday, brushed off with the line that became the catchphrase.

bygones

Origin

Plural of bygone (noun).

bylaw

Origin

From Middle English bylawe, bilawe, partly from Old English bīlage (“bylaw”) and partly from a variant of Middle English byrelawe, birlawe, from Old Norse býjar (“town's; settlement's”) + lǫg (“laws; jurisdiction”). Byrlaw is attested earlier in English but is unattested in Old Norse and the cognates in Scandinavian languages follow the development of bylaw: Danish bylov (“municipal law”), Swedish bylag and byalag.

byline

Origin

From by- + line.

byname

Origin

From by- + name. Cognate with Dutch bijnaam (“nickname”), German Beiname (“nickname, epithet”), Swedish binamn, Danish binavn and Norwegian Bokmål binavn.

bypass

Origin

A straightforward compound of by- + pass — literally a route that "passes by" the main one.

byplay

Origin

From by- + play.

byre

Origin

From Middle English bire, bier, byr, from Old English bȳre.

byrlady

Origin

Blend of by + our + lady.