Butte

How to spell butte

5 letters · 1 syllable

The most common mistake is bute. The letters people get wrong are highlighted.

bute butte

What people typed instead

• bute3 people

How to pronounce butte

What does butte mean?

1. nounAn isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top, rising sharply from flat surrounding land.

Butte in a sentence

• The lone butte rose hundreds of feet above the desert floor.

• Hikers photographed the red sandstone butte at sunset.

Where does butte come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes straight from French, where butte means a small hill, knoll, or mound, and earlier a raised bank used to back a shooting target. The French noun grew out of Old French but, meaning a mark or goal aimed at, the same root that gave English the verb and noun butt in the sense of a target. American English adopted butte in the early nineteenth century, when French speaking trappers and explorers moving through the western territories needed a name for the steep sided, flat topped hills that rise abruptly from the surrounding plain. The spelling kept its full French dress, including the silent final e, which is the main thing that trips up writers who expect it to look like the everyday word butt. Because it is pronounced the same as beaut, the short form of beauty, the two are easily muddled on paper even though their meanings have nothing in common.

How the word is built

• butte (from French butte: a small rise or mound of earth)

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