Word.ws English Dictionary

butternut

butternut noun: a North American walnut tree, Juglans cinerea.

butternut: a North American walnut tree, Juglans cinerea
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

butternut (countable and uncountable, plural butternuts)

  1. A North American walnut tree, Juglans cinerea.
    Synonyms:
    white walnut
  2. The wood or bark of this walnut tree.
  3. The nut of this walnut tree.
  4. A dye made from the fruit of this walnut tree.
  5. The souari nut.
  6. (informal outside South Africa) Butternut squash.
    • He made a delicious butternut soup.

Noun (2) capitalized: Butternut

Butternut (plural Butternuts)

  1. (US, obsolete) Southern settlers of the Ohio river basin, who used dye from the butternut tree to colour their home-made clothing
    • Yankees took to calling the Borderlanders “butternuts”—a reference to the color of their crude homespun clothes.2011, Colin Woodard, chapter 17, in American nations, New York: Penguin, →ISBN
  2. (US, obsolete) A Confederate Southerner, or somebody who supported southern rights and slavery
    • The Illinois troops delivered a volley that sent the butternuts scampering back across the field.1958, Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative. Vol. 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville.

Synonyms of butternut

Forms of butternut

pluralbutternuts
pluralButternuts

Plural of butternut: butternuts

Origin of butternut

From butter + nut.

After the color of the Confederate uniform.

Words formed from butternut

Phrases with butternut

Questions about butternut

What does butternut mean?
Butternut means a North American walnut tree, Juglans cinerea.
What part of speech is butternut?
Butternut is a noun.
What is the plural of butternut?
The plural of butternut is butternuts.

Words near butternut in the dictionary

  1. buttermints
  2. buttermonger
  3. buttermongers
  4. Buttermore
  5. Buttermores
  6. butternut
  7. butternut pumpkin
  8. butternut pumpkins
  9. butternut squash
  10. butternut squashes
  11. butternuts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: butternut (page history and authors); Butternut (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: “butternut.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/butternut. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.