† 1. A cup for holding butter. Obs.
1512. Will E. Grantham (Somerset Ho.). My buttercuppis of silver.
2. A name popularly applied to species of Ranunculus bearing yellow cup-shaped flowers, esp. R. bulbosus, R. acris, and R. repens; and usually taken as the English name of the genus.
[The name, which seems to be first recorded in the course of 18th c., may be regarded as a mixture of the older names for these plants, viz. BUTTERFLOWER and gold-cups or king-cups. In the earlier instances it is always buttercups.]
1777. Lightfoot, Fl. Scot. (1789), I. 292. Ranunculus bulbosus, Bulbous Crowfoot, or Butter-cups, Anglis; R. acris, Upright Meadow Crowfoot.
1792. Martyn, Flora Rust., I. 30. These three Crowfoots are confounded by persons ignorant of Botany under the names of Butter-flowers, Butter-cups, King-Cups, Gold-cups and Gold-knops.
1797. Miller, Gard. Dict., It … is confounded vulgarly with the repens and bulbosus under the name of Butterflower or Butter-cups; under the notion that the yellow colour of butter is owing to these plants.
1803. Wordsw., Small Celandine, 51, Wks. (1869), 120. Buttercups, that will be seen, Whether we will see or no.
1817. Rees, Cycl., s.v., Ranunculus bulbosus, Bulbous Crow-foot, or Buttercups.
1821. Clare, Vill. Minstr., II. 173. Feather-headed grasses … And yellow buttercup.
1872. Oliver, Elem. Bot., II. § 2. 123. Thus, we refer all the species of Buttercup to the genus Ranunculus.
b. Applied (with distinctive epithets) to other plants bearing flowers of similar appearance, Water Buttercup (Caltha palustris and Ranunculus aquatilis), White Buttercups (Parnassia palustris). (Britten and Holland.)
3. attrib. (in late use, referring to the bright golden-yellow color of the flower).
1875. Miss Braddon, Str. World, i. 1. In buttercup-time, just when May … melts into tender June.
1883. Truth, 31 May, 760/2. Smartly dressed in a short buttercup satin skirt…. The boots were of the buttercup shade of the satin skirt.
