FluentPlex

butterfly

/ˈbʌ.tə(ɹ).flaɪ/ verb C2
  1. To cut (food) almost entirely in half and spread the halves apart, in a shape suggesting the wings of a butterfly. (transitive) · butterflied shrimp· Butterfly the chicken before you grill it.
  2. To cut strips of surgical tape or plasters into thin strips, and place across (a gaping wound) to close it. (transitive)
  3. To cause events after the point of divergence to not happen as they did in real history, and people conceived after the point of divergence to not exist in recognizable form, due to the random variations introduced by the butterfly effect. (transitive) · Pearl Harbor not happening would've butterflied Taylor Swift.

He/she/it butterflies · Past butterflied · Past participle butterflied · -ing form butterflying

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Verb forms

Base form
butterfly
He/she/it
butterflies
Past
butterflied
Past participle
butterflied
-ing form
butterflying

From the library

She sat down on the grass and looked at her companions, and they sat down and looked at her, and Toto found that for the first time in his life he was too tired to chase a butterfly that flew past his head.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, p. 96 · B2
And the butterfly has flown
A Child's Garden of Verses, p. 22 · C1
“I declare, my recitation has made you cry, Marilla,” said Anne gaily stooping over Marilla’s chair to drop a butterfly kiss on that lady’s cheek.
Anne of Green Gables, p. 288 · C1
“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, p. 31 · B2

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Words, meanings, pronunciations and translations from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); how common each word is from wordfreq. Made into this dictionary by FluentPlex.