guns and butter
guns and butter noun: defense and social government spending, especially when seen as a trade-off.
Noun
guns and butter pl (plural only)
- Defense and social government spending, especially when seen as a trade-off.
- With colleagues clamouring for money, it suits him to say we cannot have both guns and butter.2001 October 1, David Walker, “Guns or butter? A hard choice for Gordon Brown”, in The Guardian
- Having to service demands for both guns and butter, the US economy began to overheat; inflation ensued.2022, Gary Gerstle, chapter 2, in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order […] , New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, Part I. The New Deal Order, 1930–1980
Forms of guns and butter
| alternative form | guns or butter |
|---|---|
| alternative form | guns versus butter |
Questions about guns and butter
- What does guns and butter mean?
- Guns and butter means defense and social government spending, especially when seen as a trade-off.
- What part of speech is guns and butter?
- Guns and butter is a noun.
Words near guns and butter in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: guns and butter (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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