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

+ Save to review

Verb forms

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

From the library

And the butterfly has flown
A Child's Garden of Verses, p. 22 · 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
On the stage of that comedy he had assumed to play the one-night part of a butterfly of fashion and an idler of means and taste.
Six stories from The Four Million, p. 31 · 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

Other matches

Learn butterfly in real texts

With a free account, hover any word in the library for its meaning, hear it read aloud, save words for review timed to your memory, and see how much of each book you already know.

Create free account
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.