butte U.S.
(bjuːt)
Also bute.
[a. F. butte a hillock or rising ground; cf. butt n.5]
In Western U.S.: An isolated hill or peak rising abruptly (see quot. 1845).
| 1838 Parker Rocky Mts. 70 Red Bute, which is a high bluff. 1845 Frémont Rocky Mount. 145 (Bartlett) It [the word butte] is applied to the detached hills and ridges which rise abruptly, and reach too high to be called hills or ridges, and not high enough to be called mountains. Knob, as applied in the Western States, is their most descriptive term in English. 1880 Century Mag. xxiv. 510 Everything in the way of hill, rock, mountain, or clay-heap is called a butte in Montana. 1881 Geikie In Wyoming in Macm. Mag. XLIV. 236 Here and there isolated flat-topped eminences or ‘buttes’, as they are styled..rise from the plain. |
| attrib. 1880 Scribner's Mag. July 454 Broken down among the rocks of a stony bit of butte-road. |