[f. BUTT sb.3, 7 + END.]
1. = BUTT sb.3 (and now more frequent).
1580. North, Plutarch (1676), 955. Leptines … took a Halbard … and with the butt end of it drew on the ground that which he would.
1611. Chapman, May Day, Wks. 1873, II. 339. The butt end of a shoemakers horn.
1677. Hobbes, Homer, 141. The butt-ends of their spears fixt in the ground.
1792. Munchausen’s Trav., ii. 8. The but-end of my whip.
1833. Regul. Instr. Cavalry, I. 34. The butt-end of the carbine.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., III. 244. In another moment his brains would have been knocked out with the but end of a musket, when he was recognised and saved.
b. fig. The mere concluding part; the ‘fag end.’
1594. Shaks., Rich. III., II. ii. 110. The butt-end of a Mothers blessing.
1676. Adv. Men of Shaftesbury, 36. The Dear Bag was gone, the Butt-end of all his hopes.
1820. Edin. Rev., XXXIII. 207. Added to a Deposition the but-end of an Indictment.
1825. Blackw. Mag., XVIII. 162. Their rhapsodies only recall the butt-end of an ancient cavalier song.
† 2. The thickest part of the trunk of a tree, just above the root. Obs.
1677. W. Hubbard, Narrative, 65. He nimbly got behind the but end of a Tree newly turned up by the roots.
1760. Winthrop, in Phil. Trans., LII. 10. A great tree, 21/2 feet in diameter at the butt-end.
3. Naut. See BUTT sb.7
