cigarette butt
26
1.3
- noun
- /ˈsɪɡəˌrɛt bʌt/
:
colilla
- As dusk fell, the grandstands were littered with losing tickets, cigarette butts, and shattered hopes.
Or, you know, cigarette butts on them and just terrible stuff.
- Or, you know, cigarette butts on them and just terrible stuff.
- There was a full can of cigarette butts.
- And I'm thinking to myself, he's that kid out there and we begin to find places where he has been standing and there'll be hundreds of cigarette butts.
- So it was a, you know, cocktail glasses everywhere, cigarette butts on the floors and in drinks and in Astros, you know, like I had to clean up the room.
Examples
-
There is a mound of my mother's cigarette butts in the big fish-shaped ashtray.
Fiction book (1999) -
I tell you, I found a cigarette butt by the back wheel of the Buick.
-
- Found a cigarette butt at home.
-
Now pick up that cigarette butt.
-
A cigarette butt got in the wastebasket.
-
There was a small pile of cigarette butts on the ground next to where he had been sitting.
Fiction book (2001) -
I heard my mother pound a cigarette butt into an ashtray on the table.
Fiction book (1990) -
Crouching, she counted twenty or more cigarette butts in a wobbling raft.
Fiction book (1993) -
SLOW BEND RESTAURANT - NIGHT C.U. on an ashtray filled with cigarette butts as Carolyn anxiously lights another.
Fiction book (1995) -
Please don’t throw your cigarette butt on the ground; it's harmful to the environment.
Synonyms
48
5.2
The small part of a cigarette left after someone smokes it
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: combining 'cigarette' (the smoked tobacco cylinder) with 'butt' (the stub/remnant) yields the small remnant left after smoking. Although 'butt' has other senses, in this collocation the remnant sense is obvious and predictable for a B1 learner who knows both words.
Etymology
Cigarette butt comes from the older use of butt to mean an 'end' or 'stump', like the short part left of a tree. So the picture of a tiny butt left after smoking helps explain why it means 'the small remnant of a cigarette left after it has been smoked'.