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butter cookie

butter cookie

5 1.0
A small crisp cookie made with a lot of butter
  • noun
  • /ˈbʌtər ˈkʊki/
  • US
translation icon : galleta de mantequilla
  • She enjoyed a delicious butter cookie with her coffee at the café.
  • peanut butter cookies
  • sweet butter cookies
  • Danish butter cookies

Examples

  • Your mom and I are gonna finish these beans, and then we'll make you some butter cookies for after.

  • "My pleasure," said Mrs. Bridge, accepting a sugar-sprinkled butter cookie from the plate.

    Fiction book (1997)
  • My grandma's diamond-shaped walnut and sugar-studded butter cookies.

    Blog text (19)
  • For the bake sale, I prepared a batch of classic butter cookies topped with colorful sprinkles.

  • The children excitedly decorated their butter cookies with icing and candy before eating them.

Synonyms

cookie
vsbutter cookie
  • US
774 1.0

A small flat sweet baked treat often with chocolate chips or nuts

is crisper and richer with a higher butter proportion
shortbread cookie
vsbutter cookie
  • US
1 1.6

A rich biscuit made with lots of butter and sugar, crisp and crumbly

is crisper and thinner with a high proportion of butter

How Rich

marzipan
9 4.6
butter cookie
  • US
5 1.0
macaroon
13 3.5
biscuit
  • US
45 1.0

Surface Forms

butter cookie singular

Morphology

butter + cookie

The meaning is directly compositional: 'butter' specifies the ingredient or flavor and 'cookie' names the baked sweet, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer a cookie made with butter. This noun–noun modifier pattern is cross-linguistically common and follows regular English composition, making the expression immediately understandable from its parts.

Etymology

Butter cookie comes from the simple idea of a small cookie made with lots of butter, so bakers used extra butter to make it crisp and rich. So, the name tells you it is 'rich and buttery' in taste.