Other forms: butts, butting, butted
To butt is to strike with the head — a goat butts a gate, a footballer heads rather than butts. A headbutt is the deliberate human version and is an assault.
The noun does several unrelated jobs. A butt is the thick end of something — a rifle butt, a cigarette butt. In American English it is the part of the body you sit on, and it is informal there and rude in Britain. The butt of a joke is the person it is aimed at. And butt in means to interrupt, while butt out means to stop interfering, both informal and both said impatiently.
1verbbuttTo strike with the head.
“The goat butted the gate until it opened.”
2nounthickThe thick end of something.
“There were cigarette butts all along the wall.”
3nounjokeThe person a joke or criticism is aimed at.
“He was the butt of every joke that term.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
butt is a blow with the head, or a thick end.
The verb comes from Old French buter, to strike, of Germanic origin. The noun meaning a thick end is a different Germanic word entirely, from a root meaning blunt — the same family as button and, at a distance, bottom. Two words, one spelling.
Middle English
butte
English, today
butt
Built from
From Middle English butte. From Middle English but, butte (“goal, mark, butt of land”), from Old English byt, bytt (“small piece of land”) and butt (attested in diminutive Old English buttuc (“end, small piece of land”) > English buttock), from Proto-West Germanic butt, from Proto-Germanic buttaz (“end, piece”), from Proto-Indo-European bʰudʰnós (“bottom”), later thematic variant of Proto-Indo-European bʰudʰmḗn, perhaps from Proto-Indo-European dʰewbʰ- (“deep”). Cognate with Norwegian butt (“stump, block”), Faroese buttur (“wooden block”), Icelandic bútur (“piece, fragment”), Low German butt (“blunt, clumsy”). Influenced by Old French but, butte (“but, mark”), ultimately from the same gem - source. Compare also Albanian bythë (“buttocks”), Ancient Greek πυθμήν (“bottom of vessel”), Latin fundus (“bottom”) and Sanskrit बुध्न (“bottom”), from the same Proto-Indo-European - root. Related to bottom, boot.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA