Butter : nm Le butter is an edible, unctuous, ivory white to golden yellow fatty substance, obtained by beating the cream of cow's milk.
It fits like butter, very easily. (It's gone like butter).
It's (real) butter: it's very easy, very simple.
Go for his butter: go for his money.
Putting butter in the spinach: improve your situation (See the story of this expression below).
And your sister ? Does she beat the butter? : what I concern myself !
To be all butter or to have butter hands ": to be soft.
Make your own money from (something): make your profit from, use with profit (often illicit).
No more (quantity, function,…) than butter in the ass: nothing.
Make butter: make money, make money.
Magnering (or handling) butter: doing business.
Melt like butter in the sun ”, disappear at full speed.
Butter plate : source of profits.
Counting as butter: counting for nothing; be a negligible amount.
And me, do I count for butter? : Have no value.
(The Anglo-Saxons use the word " straw "- straw - for this expression).
Wanting the butter and the money of the butter ”: wanting everything, without consideration (See the story of this expression below).
To invent the yarn to cut the butter: make a ridiculous proposal, which everyone had already thought of.
Not having invented the thread to cut the butter ": to be of reduced intelligence, a little stupid, not to be very clever.
Playing for nothing: playing for nothing, without being committed.
Ear butter: secretion from the ears.
Promise more butter than bread: make exaggerated promises.
To be like bread and butter ”: inseparable people, said of inseparable people or things, which logically come in pairs.
Beat the butter: speculate, play up and down.
Beat the butter (Belgium): get confused.
There is no more (such and such a thing, such a person) than butter in a spit, in a branch, in a bottle, in the buttocks, in the ass: there is nothing at all, no one.
One cannot have (claim) the butter and the money of the butter: one cannot enjoy a good and the fruit of its sale, one must choose.
Black eye, marked with black due to a contusion (shell, poached eye).
Not having invented the butter-cutting thread: not being smart.
Quarter of butter: gold ingot.
Petit -eurre: formerly bundles of banknotes folded in eight and tightened by an elastic band.
Butter beater: stockbroker.
Extra in butter: Theater extra who is paid (opposite: extra in oil).
Living in Butter and Herbs: Living the Easy Life of " mackerel ».
Go easy: enjoy copiously, when you are under the man, without fear of having a child.
To have butter on the head: to have committed some more or less serious misdeeds, - in the slang of the thieves.
The story of three popular expressions on butter:
- Wanting the butter and the money of the butter: Wanting everything, without compensation - Wanting to win on all fronts.
The use of this expression comes to us at least from the end of the XNUMXth century.
Common sense in the peasantry means that we cannot, honestly, sell the butter we have just made, keep the money, but also keep the butter, in order to be able to resell it again and again. Always wanting to keep everything to oneself, wanting to gain everything without leaving anything to others, is to want butter and money.
But even if one temporarily and honestly succeeds in keeping the butter and the silver from the butter, one must never lose sight of the fact that butter, like silver, can melt very easily and quickly.
Of this expression there are some variants where we also find cited the creamer supposed to have made the butter. Among these we have the trivial wanting the butter, the butter money and the dairy girl's ass.
Flandrin also notes that the development of butter in France coincides with the status granted to it by the Church. Being a product of animal origin, until the XNUMXth century butter was prohibited during Lent. Due to the multiplication of dispensations from the end of the XNUMXth century, during the XNUMXth century butter began to be used in vegetable and fish dishes (which were authorized in Lent), while in the Middle Ages it was used almost exclusively with eggs, pasta and pastries.