buttermilk

Etymology

It is formed from English butter + milk.^[2][3][4] The first part is from Old English butere, an early borrowing from Latin būtȳrum, from Ancient Greek βούτυρον (boúturon);^[2][3] the second, milk, is meoluc, from Proto-Germanic *meluk-, which Watkins traces to Proto-Indo-European *melg- (“to wipe, rub off; to milk”).^[3] The OED compares regional Dutch botermelk and German Buttermilch, both recorded from the 16th century;^[2][3] Middle French had babeurre and laict beurré.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The milk left after the butter has been churned out of cream, sourer than fresh milk and used as a drink or in cooking: before 1500, in a text printed in Reliquiæ Antiquæ.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to about 1500,^[3] Merriam-Webster Unabridged to the 15th century,^[5] the 1989 edition of the OED to 1528,^[6] and Dictionary.com to 1520–30.^[4]

Semantic evolution

The meaning "soured milk" is recorded by the 1590s;^[3] Etymonline explains it either by the practice of letting milk sour before churning, so that the cream separates, or by the skimmed milk souring more readily once the cream is gone.^[3] Modern buttermilk is usually made by adding bacterial cultures to milk, a sense Merriam-Webster Unabridged and the American Heritage Dictionary record.^[3][5][7] Johnson (1755) defined it as the whey separated from the cream when butter is made.^[8] From 1606 the word was used as an adjective for a pale yellow colour, or pale and pallid;^[2] from 1630, in Massinger, it was also used figuratively for something weak, insipid or sour;^[2] the noun for the colour is recorded from 1977.^[2] In American regional speech a buttermilk was an orphaned calf, from such calves being fed on the milk left after churning, and the word described boggy land in Indiana in 1843.^[9] In Cheshire and Warwickshire dialect, compounds included buttermilk-can, the long-tailed tit, and buttermilk-man, a scornful name for a trooper of the Cheshire Yeomanry.^[10] In American slang of the 1970s it could mean beer.^[11]

Timeline

• before 1500 – the liquid left after butter has been churned from cream.^[2]
• 1590s – soured milk.^[3]
• 1606 – adjective, pale yellow, pallid.^[2]
• 1630 – figuratively, something weak or insipid.^[2]
• 1843 – in Indiana, of boggy land.^[9]
• 1977 – a pale yellow colour.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The sourish liquid left after butter has been churned from milk or cream, used as a drink and in baking: pancakes made with buttermilk.^[12][5][2]
2. Cultured milk made by adding bacteria to sweet milk.^[5][7]
3. A pale yellow colour like that of buttermilk.^[2]

Adjective

1. Of a pale yellow colour; pale.^[2]

Related words

• butter
• milk

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
8. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
9. ^ a b Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
10. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
11. ^ Dalzell, Tom; Victor, Terry, eds. (2013), The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2nd ed., London: Routledge
12. ^ Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins