butty

English

Etymology 1

A bacon butty.

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

Pronunciation

• (Northern English accents) IPA^(key): /ˈbʊti/
  • Rhymes: -ʊti
• (some other UK accents, US accents) IPA^(key): /ˈbʌti/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

  • Rhymes: -ʌti

Noun

butty (plural butties)

1. (UK, chiefly Northern England, New Zealand, Australia, Ireland) A sandwich, usually with a hot savoury filling in a breadcake. The most common are chips, bacon, sausage and egg.

   Let's have a bacon butty!

Derived terms

• bacon butty
• chip butty

See also

• sanger
• sango
• sarnie

Etymology 2

Possibly from booty

Noun

butty (plural butties)

1. (colloquial, UK, now chiefly Wales and West Country) A friend.
2. (mining) A miner who works under contract, receiving a fixed amount per ton of coal or ore.
   • 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter 1, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

     But Alfred Charlesworth did not forgive the butty these public-house sayings. Consequently, although Morel was a good miner, sometimes earning as much as five pounds a week when he married, [...]

3. (colloquial, UK) A workmate.
4. (archaic, UK dialect, among boys) A drudge; a cat's paw; someone who does the hard work; someone who is being taken advantage of by someone else.

   Ah didn't play butty, ah promise yer. Yo all on yer mek the poor lad yer butty.

5. (archaic, Shropshire) One of a pair of shoes or gloves.

   I've fund one shoe, but canna see the butty no-weer.

Synonyms

• (friend): chum, fam, mate, mucker, see also Thesaurus:friend
• (workmate): colleague, partner, workmate, workfellow

Derived terms

• butty-brew
• butty collier
• butty-gang
• butty-lark
• butty-man
• butty-piece
• butty-shop
• do butty
• go butty
• play butty

Verb

butty (third-person singular simple present butties, present participle buttying, simple past and past participle buttied)

1. (archaic, UK dialect) To work together; to keep company with.

   I butty with Jackson.

2. (archaic, Shropshire) To cohabit; to reside with another as a couple.

   Did'n'ee 'ear as Jim Tunkiss brought three children to the parish? I reckon 'e inna married, but 'e's bin buttyin' along o' one o' them Monsells.

3. (archaic, Yorkshire) To act in concert with intent to defraud; to play unfairly.

Synonyms

• (to cohabit): cohabit, live in sin, live over the brush
• (to defraud): con, trick

Etymology 3

butt (“type of cart”) +‎ -y

Adjective

butty (comparative more butty, superlative most butty)

1. (dated, Ireland and West Country) Resembling a heavy cart.

   Shall it be a giggy thing, or a carty thing, or a butty thing?

References

Wright, Joseph (1898) The English Dialect Dictionary‎^[1], volume 1, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 468

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “butty”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)