U.S. Also bute. [a. F. butte a hillock or rising ground; cf. BUTT sb.5]
In Western U.S.: An isolated hill or peak rising abruptly (see quot. 1845).
1838. S. Parker, Explor. Tour Rocky Mts., 70. Encamped towards night at a place called the Red Bute, which is a high bluff of land.
1845. Frémont, Rocky Mount., 145 (Bartlett). It [the word butte] is applied to the detached hills and ridges which rise abruptly, and reach too high to be called hills or ridges, and not high enough to be called mountains. Knob, as applied in the Western States, is their most descriptive term in English.
1881. Geikie, In Wyoming, in Macm. Mag., XLIV. 236/2. Here and there isolated flat-topped eminences or ‘buttes,’ as they are styled in the west, rise from the plain in front of a line or bluff or cliff to a height of several hundred feet.
1882. E. V. Smalley, in Century Mag., XXIV. 510/2. Everything in the way of hill, rock, mountain, or clay-heap is called a butte in Montana.
attrib. 1880. E. Ingersoll, in Scribner’s Mag., July, 454/1. The same wagons … broken down among the rocks of a stony bit of butte-road, were grimly labeled ‘Busted, by Thunder!’
