[
US
/ˈbətɝˌfɫaɪ/
]
[ UK /bˈʌtəflˌaɪ/ ]
[ UK /bˈʌtəflˌaɪ/ ]
NOUN
- diurnal insect typically having a slender body with knobbed antennae and broad colorful wings
- a swimming stroke in which the arms are thrown forward together out of the water while the feet kick up and down
VERB
-
talk or behave amorously, without serious intentions
My husband never flirts with other women
The guys always try to chat up the new secretaries - flutter like a butterfly
-
cut and spread open, as in preparation for cooking
butterflied shrimp
How To Use butterfly In A Sentence
- Ladies in Blue," a tribute to the pill-popping entourage that surrounded the "Iron Butterfly," as she was known, recalls the cooing stomp of ABBA; Kate Pierson of the B-52s belts "The Whole Man" as if it's one of her own hits. TIME.com: Top Stories
- She had wiggled through a tot-sized aperture in the alcove, and toddled over to a display of butterfly nets four feet away.
- Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. The hand can't hit, what the eye can't see. Muhammad Ali
- Six biogeographical zones, ranging from subtropical forest to highland scrub, host an impressive 151 species of bird, 34 species of mammal, 228 species of butterfly and countless plants. Taiwan's Greatest Ascent
- A delectable path, for example, runs up behind the cemetery, bordered by butterfly orchids and lithospermum and aristolochia and other plants worthy of better names; it winds aloft, under shady chestnuts, with views on either side. Alone
- A rare comma butterfly was spotted in the garden in Grassington of lepidopterist James Birdsall.
- Photographs of Ayesha were appearing in all the papers, and the pilgrims even passed advertising hoardings on which the lepidopteral beauty had been painted three times as large as life, beside slogans reading _Our cloths also are as delicate as a butterfly's wing_, or suchlike. The Satanic Verses
- The so-called psyche or butterfly is generated from caterpillars which grow on green leaves, chiefly leaves of the raphanus, which some call crambe or cabbage. The History of Animals
- I gave my ideas on "playwriting" again at Philadelphia, and was told just before I began that there were several dramatists in the room, including the author of Madame Butterfly. Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography
- You will soon have a thick, impenetrable hedge to enclose the fast-growing butterfly bush, Buddleia davidii (coppice it annually to promote flowers), or the heavenly blue blooms of enthusiastic ceanothus thrysiflorus.