Word.ws English Dictionary

land with one's bum in the butter

land with one's bum in the butter verb: to find oneself in fortunate circumstances.

Verb

land with one's bum in the butter (third-person singular simple present lands with one's bum in the butter, present participle landing with one's bum in the butter, simple past and past participle landed with one's bum in the butter)

  1. (Australia, South Africa, UK, also, informal) To find oneself in fortunate circumstances.
    • Margaret and Eric, the brother and sister who moved out of our house really landed with their bum in the butter. They were fostered out to a family that had a car which meant they were rich, as only rich people had cars.2011, Bill Green, Billy: One Boy's War, page 56
    • Once again, we'd landed with our bums in the butter. We spent the next couple of months in New York at shows, listening to music and meeting a dazzling array of artists, musicians, playwrights, actors and others […]2012, Roger Lucey, Back in from the Anger, page 151

Forms of land with one's bum in the butter

third-person singular presentlands with one's bum in the butter
present participlelanding with one's bum in the butter
past participlelanded with one's bum in the butter
pastlanded with one's bum in the butter

Origin of land with one's bum in the butter

Likely a calque of Dutch met zijn gat in de boter vallen.

Questions about land with one's bum in the butter

What does land with one's bum in the butter mean?
Land with one's bum in the butter means to find oneself in fortunate circumstances.
What part of speech is land with one's bum in the butter?
Land with one's bum in the butter is a verb.
What is the past tense of land with one's bum in the butter?
The past tense of land with one's bum in the butter is landed with one's bum in the butter.

Words near land with one's bum in the butter in the dictionary

  1. land whale
  2. land whales
  3. land wind
  4. land winds
  5. land with
  6. land with one's bum in the butter
  7. land yacht
  8. land yachting
  9. land yachts
  10. Land's End
  11. land's sake

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: land with one's bum in the 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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