yak butter
1
7.4
- noun
- Indian
:
mantequilla de yak
- He thought of being in the Himalayas with Alice, drinking tea with buffalo milk, lighting yak butter candles, and sleeping in a lean-to as monks passed by in fuchsia robes.
- yak butter tea
It's going and living in a cave in the Himalayas for a month at a time and having cold rice and yak butter.
- It's going and living in a cave in the Himalayas for a month at a time and having cold rice and yak butter.
Examples
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Go next door and eat yak butter and deep-fried Twinkies.
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The smell of yak butter was overpowering everywhere.
Fiction book (1999) -
We use yak butter there.
Fiction book (1994) -
The smell of yak butter didn't help.
Fiction book (1999) -
There were the oddly compatible odors of yak butter and hashish.
Fiction book (1999) -
It's really good for you, seaweed spinach quiche with cultured yak butter.
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No matter where I went in the city, my nostrils filled with an oily, smoky odor I could not identify but chose to believe was yak butter.
Fiction book (1999) -
But I've got a great new recipe, seaweed spinach quiche with cultured yak butter, you are gonna love it, Marbo, sit.
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Tibetans traditionally use yak butter to enrich their tea, making it creamy and flavorful.
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During the festival, they served dishes made with yak butter and various local spices.
Synonyms
635
1.0
A soft yellow food made from cream used for cooking and spreading
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'butter made from yak milk' is directly and predictably derived from the constituents 'yak' (a high-altitude bovine) and 'butter' (a fatty spread). This is a straightforward compositional noun-noun compound with no idiomatic or metaphorical shift, and similar compounding patterns exist cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both words will understand it.
Etymology
Yak butter is a literal name: yak (the animal) and butter (fat made from milk). In the cold Himalayan highlands people churn yak milk into butter and mix it into tea and food to 'stay warm' and get extra 'energy', so the name simply describes butter made from yak milk used for warmth and cooking.