[f. butter, bitter, earlier forms of BITTERN + BUMP v.2] Local name of the Bittern; Phillips 1678 makes it a different bird, but prob. in error.
1671. in Skinner.
1678. Phillips (App.), Butterbump, a sort of Bird which some call Onocrotalus…. Others think this bird rather than the Bittern (which they call Ardea Stellaris) to be that which is called in Latin Buteo.
1678. H. More, Glanvill’s Sadducismus, Postsc. (1681), 30. And does she not … put her Neb also into it sometimes, as into a Reed … and cry like a Butterbump?
1864. Tennyson, North. Farmer (Old Style), viii. Moäst loike a butter-bump, fur I ’eerd ’um aboot an’ aboot.
1871. E. Peacock, Ralf Skirl., II. 111. We got ten couple … besides two butter-bumps and a heronsew.
