butter up
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English
[edit]Verb
[edit]butter up (third-person singular simple present butters up, present participle buttering up, simple past and past participle buttered up)
- (transitive, figuratively, informal) To flatter, especially with the intent of personal gain.
- He takes every opportunity to butter up the boss.
- 1994, Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary, Pulp Fiction, spoken by Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino):
- I'm not a cobb of corn, so you can stop butterin' me up. I don't need you to tell me how good my coffee is.
- 2004, Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, spoken by Steve Zissou (Bill Murray):
- Do you mind if I butter you up a little before I answer that question?
- 2013 September 6, Daniel Taylor, “Danny Welbeck leads England's rout of Moldova but hit by Ukraine ban”, in The Guardian[1]:
Translations
[edit]to flatter
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References
[edit]- “Butter up”, in BBC Learning English[2], BBC, 2014 September 23
- “butter up v.” under “butter v.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present