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Glite Dictionary
cheese butty

cheese butty

7.4
A sandwich with cheese between two slices of buttered bread, common in Britain
  • noun
  • /tʃiːz ˈbʌti/
  • UK
translation icon : sándwich de queso
  • He made a quick cheese butty using leftover bread and some cheddar cheese.

Examples

  • On a cold day, nothing warms me up like a toasted cheese butty and a cup of tea.

  • You want a cheese butty, Paul?

    A Hard Day's Night (1964)

  • For lunch, I had a delicious cheese butty with a side of pickles.

Synonyms

grilled cheese
vscheese butty
  • US
34 1.0

A hot sandwich with melted cheese between toasted bread

is a simple buttered sandwich using unmelted cheese
butty
vscheese butty
  • UK
1 9.1

A sandwich with a filling like bacon, sausage or chips

is a specific sandwich made with cheese on buttered bread

How Filling

panini
4 3.5
grilled cheese
  • US
34 1.0
cheese butty
  • UK
7.4

Surface Forms

cheese butty singular
cheese butties plural

Morphology

cheese + butty

The meaning is directly compositional: 'cheese' (the filling) + 'butty' (a sandwich) yields a sandwich with cheese, so a learner who knows both words can infer the meaning. Although 'butty' is regional British slang, the noun-compound pattern is regular and cross-linguistically common, making the expression predictable for a B1 learner.

Etymology

Cheese butty The name cheese butty comes from old British slang: butty was a short word for a buttered piece of bread, so cheese between buttered bread became a cheese butty. That's why the phrase means 'a cheese sandwich'.