Word.ws English Dictionary

butter-hams

butter-hams is the plural of butter-ham.

Meaning of butter-ham

Noun

butter-ham (plural butter-hams)

  1. (obsolete) A slice of buttered bread.
    • Faith, I was within ams-ace of being found out ; for one night at a mum-house, where I was eating a butter-ham and pickled herrings, with some of the states, and where I was giving my self airs of greatness and interest in my country, swearing I myself would take care that my country, and three...1771, Charles Davenant, Charles Whitworth, The Political And Commercial Works, page 240
  2. (archaic) One of two strips of trim on either side of a cloak.
    • A cloak, half a yard shorter than the Breeches, not through lin'd, but fac'd as far as 'twas turned back, with a pair of frugal butter-hams.2003, Cynthia Lowenthal, Performing Identities on the Restoration Stage, →ISBN, page 89
  3. (North, Yorkshire) a person who is overly ostentatious in their dress or actions.

Questions about butter-hams

What is butter-hams the plural of?
Butter-hams is the plural of butter-ham.

Words near butter-hams in the dictionary

  1. butter-fat
  2. butter-fats
  3. butter-fingered
  4. butter-flower
  5. butter-ham
  6. butter-hams
  7. butter-muslin
  8. butter-slide
  9. butter-slides
  10. butter-woman
  11. butter-women

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: butter-hams (page history and authors); butter-ham (page history and authors). 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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Cite this entry: “butter-hams.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/butter-hams. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.