buttery

What it means

1. Made with or tasting of butter.

   The buttery-tasting cookie was actually made with margarine, but you couldn't tell by tasting it.

2. Resembling butter in some way, such as yellow color or smooth texture.

   The old paper was a buttery color you no longer get.

   2 more examples

   While the European pear is, at its finest, buttery and surrenders to the slightest pressure, Asian pears are firm, very crisp, hugely juicy and sweet and, in some cases, highly aromatic – spicy almost.

   2015 September 5, Mark Diacono, “In praise of the Asian pear”, in The Daily Telegraph (Gardening), archived from the original on 12 Sep 2015, pages 1–2

   Most libraries have smooth, buttery legatos and exciting, natural-sounding spiccatos.

   2019, Gina Zdanowicz, Spencer Bambrick, The Game Audio Strategy Guide: A Practical Course

3. informalMarked by insincere flattery; obsequious.

   He'll be nothing but enraptured with your buttery words .

   1997, Russell Wild, Games Bosses Play: 36 Career Busters Your Supervisor May Be Firing Your Way and How You Can Defend Yourself, page 100

   1 more example

   Dawson, for one, is on the right wavelength, goosing his buttery game-show host persona into a caricature of unctuous evil.

   2000, Scott von Doviak, Stephen King Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About the King of Horror on Film

In a sentence

The buttery-tasting cookie was actually made with margarine, but you couldn't tell by tasting it.

Where it comes from

1. Middle Englishbuttry
2. Englishbuttery

From Middle English buttry, equivalent to butter + -y. Piecewise doublet of butyric, butter ultimately being from Latin būtȳrum and -y being a doublet of -ic.