Word.ws English Dictionary

butch

/bʊt͡ʃ/

butch adjective: very masculine, with a masculine appearance or attitude.

Adjective

butch (comparative butcher or more butch, superlative butchest or most butch)

  1. Very masculine, with a masculine appearance or attitude.
    • There, look, Mr. Horne! Vada that great butch lucoddy!1967, Barry Took, Marty Feldman, Round the Horne, spoken by Sandy (Kenneth Williams)
    • Nor can I credit that a — to put it crudely — proud bisexual butch Italian — albeit one lonely, poor, emotional and without strong will — which Giovanni is shown to be in the earlier part of the book, should become, in a mere matter of months, and as the result of any happening, the venal...1979, Colin MacInnes, Out of the way: later essays
    Antonyms:
    femme, feminine
  2. Of a woman (usually lesbian), having a masculine appearance, or attitude.
    • Then I started going out with different kinds of women, and I started feeling more like I wanted to be more butch. […] I feel much more butch than I feel femme.1998, Kath Weston, Render Me, Gender Me: Lesbians Talk Sex, Class, Color, Nation, Studmuffins, Columbia University Press, →ISBN
    • The process of appreciating a butch aesthetic may be even more complex for bisexual butch women. In contrast to lesbian butches who may date only within a butch-femme community, bisexual butch women may be more likely to […] In comparison to butch bisexual women, it may be easier for femme bisexual...2007, Beth A. Firestein, Becoming Visible: Counseling Bisexuals Across the Lifespan, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 305
    Antonyms:
    femme, feminine

Noun

butch (plural butches)

  1. (countable, slang) A lesbian who appears masculine or acts in a masculine manner.
    • Coming out appeals to the narcissistic pleasure of presenting to another a finished image of ourselves, which they return to us in exactly the same form: [someone tells] you [they are] a bisexual butch, and you confirm it. But instead, it seems all too likely – especially, perhaps, for bisexuals...1997, Bi Academic Intervention, Bisexual Imaginary: Representation, Identity, and Desire, A&C Black, page 30, quoting Jo Eadie
    Synonyms:
    bull dyke, dyke
    Antonyms:
    femme

Verb

butch (third-person singular simple present butches, present participle butching, simple past and past participle butched)

  1. (intransitive, nonstandard) To work as a butcher.
    • Sax thouſand years are near hand fled, / Sin’ I was to the butching bred, / And mony a ſcheme in vain’s been laid, / To ſtap or ſcar me; / Till ane Hornbook’s ta’en up the trade, / And faith, he’ll waur me.1787, Robert Burns, “Death and Doctor Hornbook. A True Story.”, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, Edinburgh: […] the Author, and sold by William Creech, page 59
    • Butch, to practice the trade of a butcher, to kill.[1846, John Trotter Brockett, W[illiam] E[dward] Brockett, A Glossary of North Country Words, with Their Etymology, and Affinity to Other Languages; and Occasional Notices of Local Customs and...
  2. (nonstandard, transitive) To slaughter (animals) and prepare (meat) for market.
    • Take thy huge offal and white liver hence, / Or in a twinkling of this true-blue steel / I shall be butching thee from nape to rump.1834, Henry Taylor, Philip van Artvelde; a Dramatic Romance. […], 2nd edition, part II, London: Edward Moxon, […], pages 70–71
    • “Couldn’t Ali butch the cow, please?” said Bill, whose ears were ever open when the question of food was raised.1868, Anne Bowman, The Young Nile-Voyagers, London: George Routledge and Sons, […]. New York: […] , page 297

Proper noun capitalized: Butch

Butch

  1. A male nickname.

butch meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

butch in Hindi

बुच, बूच

butch in Tamil

புட்ச், புட்ஷ்

butch in Marathi

बुच

butch in Urdu

بوچ
More languagesFewer languages
butch in Bengali
বুচ, বুইচ
butch in Telugu
బుచ్
butch in Malayalam
അമിതമായ ആണത്തമുള്ള, പുരുഷോചിതമായ, പുരുഷത്വമുള്ള, വീറും അണത്തവുമുള്ള
butch in Kannada
ಗಂಡುಬೀರಿ, ಗಂಡಬೀರಿ
butch in Punjabi
ਬੁੱਚ
butch in Gujarati
બૂચ, બુચ
butch in Odia
ବୁଚ୍, ବୁଚ
butch in Nepali
बुच
butch in Malay
pengkid
butch in Indonesian
sentul

Examples of butch in a sentence

  • […] Closeted men adopted feminine affect while butch men embraced traditional masculinity.1998, Martin P. Levine, Michael S. Kimmel, Gay Macho: The Life and Death of the Homosexual Clone, page 57:
  • […] butch men who had sex with effeminate queens. […]2015, Yorick Smaal, Sex, Soldiers and the South Pacific, 1939-45:
  • The process of appreciating a butch aesthetic may be even more complex for bisexual butch women.2007, Beth A. Firestein, Becoming Visible: Counseling Bisexuals Across the Lifespan, Columbia University Press, →ISBN, page 305:
  • "Faye got wicked buff and has a super butch haircut and it is hot as shit." "It's okay, babe.2016, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content (webcomic), Number 3154: Coupling:

All 35 example sentences with butch

Synonyms of butch

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of butch

Forms of butch

Adjective
comparativebutcher
comparativemore butch
superlativebutchest
superlativemost butch
Noun
pluralbutches
Verb
third-person singular presentbutches
present participlebutching
past participlebutched
pastbutched

Origin of butch

Originally, it was probably used as an abbreviation of butcher. Later, in the 1940s, the sense of “masculine lesbian” developed.

Back-formation from butcher.

Words formed from butch

Phrases with butch

Words that rhyme with butch

Questions about butch

What does butch mean?
Butch means very masculine, with a masculine appearance or attitude.
What is butch in Hindi?
Butch in Hindi is बुच, बूच. See Butch meaning in Hindi.
How do you use butch in a sentence?
[…] Closeted men adopted feminine affect while butch men embraced traditional masculinity.
What part of speech is butch?
Butch can be an adjective, a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce butch?
Butch is pronounced /bʊt͡ʃ/.

Words near butch in the dictionary

  1. butaperazine
  2. butaprost
  3. Butaritari
  4. butas
  5. butaxamine
  6. butch
  7. butch cut
  8. butch cuts
  9. butch queen
  10. butch queens
  11. butch up

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: butch (page history and authors); Butch (page history and authors); butch (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); butch (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); butch (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); butch (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-butch.ogg.

Cite this entry: “butch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/butch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.