Etymograph

English

butt

Butt comes from Middle English but ‘goal, mark, butt of land’, and goes back to Old English byt.

  1. Old Englishc. 450–1150byt1‘small piece of land’
  2. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500but1‘goal, mark, butt of land’
  3. Englishearliest quotation 1599butt1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English butt
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1599, William Shakespeare, The Life of Henry the Fift: “To which is fixed, as an aim or butt[…]”.

Earlier history not traced here. See Wiktionary.

Lineage

  1. Old Englishc. 450–1150bytWiktionary, English butt‘small piece of land’
  2. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500butWiktionary, English butt‘goal, mark, butt of land’
  3. Englishearliest quotation 1599buttWiktionary, English butt. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1599, William Shakespeare, The Life of Henry the Fift: “To which is fixed, as an aim or butt[…]”

The story

From Middle English but, butte (‘goal, mark, butt of land’), from Old English byt, bytt (‘small piece of land’) and *butt (attested in diminutive Old English buttuc (‘end, small piece of land’) > English buttock), from Proto-West Germanic *butt, from Proto-Germanic *buttaz (‘end, piece’), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰnós (‘bottom’), later thematic variant of Proto-Indo-European *bʰudʰmḗn ~ *bʰudʰn-, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *dʰewbʰ- (‘deep’). Influenced by Old French but, butte (‘but, mark’), ultimately from the same Germanic source.

Full etymology on Wiktionary

Linked words

through Middle English but ‘goal, mark, butt of land’

but

Another origin of butt

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*bautaną‘to beat, push’reconstructed
  2. Frankishc. 250–700*bautan‘to hit, beat’reconstructed
  3. Anglo-Normanc. 1066–1400buter
  4. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500butten
  5. Englishtodaybutt

Another origin of butt

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500bote‘wine cask’disputed
  2. Englishtodaybutt

From late Middle English bote, but, butte (‘wine cask’), of disputed origin.disputed Scholars disagree here; the competing view is quoted as the source gives it.

Another origin of butt

  1. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500but
  2. Englishtodaybutt

From Middle English but, butte, botte (‘flounder; plaice; turbot’), possibly derived from sense 1 (‘blunt end’), meaning "blunt-headed fish."

Today it means

noun The buttocks or anus (used as a minced oath in idiomatic expressions; less objectionable than arse/ass).

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “butt”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Old English byt / butt

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