[f. BUTTER sb.1 + -Y1.]
1. Of the nature of butter; containing butter.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XIX. lxv. (1495), 433. Cowe mylke is … less sharpe, & more buttry.
1586. Cogan, Haven Health, cxciv. (1636), 178. Because it is buttery, it … is good against pricking paynes of the Lungs.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 418. His fatty and buttery part is hotter then the whole body of the milke.
1859. Todd, Cycl. Anat. & Phys., V. 392/2. To increase the buttery constituent.
2. Resembling butter in consistence.
1719. London & Wise, Compl. Gard., 61. Its Pulp tender, but not buttery.
1802. Forsyth, Fruit Trees, vii. (1824), 170. The flesh melting, delicate, and very buttery.
1847. Clarke, in Jrnl. Roy. Agric. Soc., VIII. I. 91. The same buttery clay may be found above a stratum of moor.
c. 1865. Letheby, in Circ. Sc., I. 95/1. The oil has a buttery consistence.
b. fig. Soft.
1868. F. E. Paget, Lucretia, 281. The disgraceful affair in which my poor thoughtless boy, with his buttery heart, has allowed himself to be entangled.
3. Smeared with butter.
1796. Mrs. Glasse, Cookery, iii. 19. Rub it over with a buttery cloth.
4. fig. Given to fulsome flattery (cf. the sb.).
1842. Tait’s Mag., IX. 725. With the Germans and Italians she is charitable, liberal, indulgent, honeyed; nay, with very particular noble favourites, buttery.
5. Comb., as buttery-fingered = BUTTER-FINGERED.
1852. Reade, Peg Woff., i. (1868), 23. All the ladies and gentlemen … whom the buttery-fingered author could not keep in hand until the fall of the curtain.
6. Buttery Benjie. In the Scottish Universities a humorous synonym for BEJAN.
1854. Blackw. Mag., LXXVI. 433.
