butterflies

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of butterfly.

   Several butterflies drifted between the flowers in the warm afternoon.

   Dozens of butterflies settled on the blooming lavender.

   Note

   A regular plural that drops the final y and adds -ies, just as city becomes cities. It carries every countable meaning of the singular: insects among the flowers, thin strips of surgical tape across a wound, a family of curves in geometry. The same spelling also does duty as a verb (she butterflies the pork loin) and as the nervous flutter in the stomach, where only the plural will do.

2. 2
   nounpluralabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of butterflies in one's stomach.

   He got butterflies whenever she walked into the room.

   The actors all had butterflies in the minutes before the curtain rose.

   Note

   The full phrase, butterflies in one's stomach, is usually trimmed to the noun alone, and it stays plural: nobody has a single butterfly. It works with have, get and feel, with a possessive (his butterflies), and causatively. Michael Jackson's "Butterflies" (2001) has someone who gives me butterflies. The flutter can be romantic, as in Paramore's "Still Into You" (2013), or plain apprehension before trouble.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of butterfly.

   She butterflies the pork loin and stuffs it with fresh herbs.

   When a cut gapes too wide for a bandage, the camp medic butterflies it closed with two strips of tape.

   Note

   The form used after he, she, it or a singular subject, and it always takes an object. A cook butterflies a pork loin, a medic butterflies a gaping wound shut with tape strips, and an alternate-history writer butterflies later events out of existence, a use borrowed from the butterfly effect. Often away follows, as in butterflies away a century's leaders. Unlike the plural noun, it never names the insect itself.

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