buttering

Pluralbutterings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of butter.

   Buttering the pan well keeps the cake from sticking.

   The cook was buttering each slice before toasting it.

   Note

   One spelling, two jobs inside the verb. After be it marks action in progress (was buttering each slice). As a gerund it names the activity while still taking a direct object (buttering the pan). That object tells it apart from the cooking noun, which needs of and can go plural: butterings of toast. The same form also carries the verb's snow-sport uses and a long-obsolete gambling slang, where buttering meant raising the stakes.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of applying butter to something, such as spreading it over bread or coating the inside of a pan.

   The buttering of the toast should happen while it is still hot, so the butter melts right in.

   A thin buttering helps the breadcrumbs cling to the fish.

   Similarcoating, greasing

   Note

   A kitchen noun that can be counted. A thin buttering is one coat, and butterings are separate acts. That countable side made it useful to philosophers: R. Barcan Marcus and her coeditors (1986) set butterings of toast beside explosions of boilers as Davidson's flesh-and-blood events. In mass use it names the task in general, as in the buttering of the pan.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The action of turning while balancing on only the tips (the nose or tail) of skis or a snowboard.

   The buttering on the nose let him pivot the board a full half-turn.

   Beginners often catch an edge when their buttering goes slightly off balance.

   Note

   Here the press is the turn itself. Weight shifts onto the nose or tail, the other end lifts clear of the snow, and the skis or board pivot on that single point of contact. The noun pairs naturally with on: a buttering on the nose, a buttering on the tail. It is the same move as the trick component, used for steering rather than as a building block.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The act of a rider balancing on the nose or tail of a snowboard or skis as one part of an acrobatic trick.

   The buttering at the start of her run set up a clean rotation.

   Judges praised the buttering woven into his trick sequence on the final rail section.

   Note

   Freestyle slang borrowed from the kitchen. Pressing onto the nose or tail of a ski or board is likened to spreading butter with the end of a knife. Here the buttering is one ingredient of a larger trick, a press worked into the maneuver rather than the maneuver itself. When the press is simply a way of changing direction, riders mean the tip-turning move.

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