(Often written with hyphens, esp. when used attrib.)
1. Bread spread with butter; also attrib.
1630. Wadsworth, Sp. Pilgr., iii. 15. Euery one hath … a peece of bread and butter.
1711. Addison, Spect., No. 323, ¶ 6. Eat a slice of Bread and butter, drank a dish of Bohea.
1817. Byron, Beppo, xxxix. The Nursery still lisps out in all they utter—Besides, they always smell of bread and butter.
1822. Kitchiner, Cook’s Oracle, 449. Bread and Butter Pudding.
1883. Roe, in Harper’s Mag., Dec., 50/2. She likes bread and butter and … realities.
2. Taken as a type of every day food; the means of living; hence attrib. in many elliptical and allusive expressions.
1836–7. Sir W. Hamilton, Metaph. (1859), I. i. 6. By the Germans, the latter [i.e., the professional or lucrative sciences] are usually distinguished as the Brodwissenschaften, which we may translate, ‘The Bread and Butter Sciences.’
1844. H. Twiss, Life Ld. Eldon, I. vi. 119. Young man, your bread and butter is cut for life.
1870. Lowell, Among My Books, Ser. I. (1873), 222. Life lifted above the plane of bread-and-butter associations.
1884. Saxe Holm, in Harper’s Mag., Dec., 92/2. Industries were not so plenty … that men could afford lightly to quarrel with their bread and butter.
1886. W. T. Stead, in Contemp. Rev., May, 663. Journalists who frankly avow what is called the bread-and-butter theory of their craft are unfortunately but too common.
3. No bread and butter of mine: no matter affecting my material interests, no business of mine.
1764. Foote, Mayor of G., I. i. However, it is no bread and butter of mine.
4. attrib.; spec. Of or pertaining to the age when bread-and-butter is extensively consumed; boyish, girlish; esp. (cf. quot. 1817 in 1) school-girlish.
a. 1625. Beaum. & Fl., Hum. Lieut., III. vi. Ye bread-and-butter rogues, do ye run from me?
1807. W. Irving, Salmag. (1824), 180. These little, beardless, bread and butter politicians.
1861. Trollope, Barchester T., xli. (D.). A lady at any rate past the wishy-washy bread-and-butter period of life.
1865. Pall Mall Gaz., 13 May, 4/2. They would feel that they were tittered at as bread-and-butter Misses.
Hence (with reference to sense 4) bread-and-butterhood, -butterishness, bread-and-buttery a.
1884. Lady M. Majendie, Out of Element, III. xxiv. 321. I think the ties of bread-and-butterhood are stronger than any later ones after all.
1843. Blackw. Mag., LIII. 80. They … emerge … into the full and perfect imago of little … gentlemen, and little ladies, without any of those intermediate conditions of laddism, hobble-de-hoyism, or bread-and-butterishness.
1859. G. Meredith, R. Feverel, xiii. (1885), 90. His future bride is now pinafored and bread-and-buttery.
1882. Mrs. Riddell, Struggle for Fame, xxvi. You [an authoress] are rather bread-and-buttery still.
