Word.ws English Dictionary

put butter on one's bread

put butter on one's bread verb: to earn money.

Verb

put butter on one's bread (third-person singular simple present puts butter on one's bread, present participle putting butter on one's bread, simple past and past participle put butter on one's bread)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To earn money.
    • "Well, it won't put butter on our bread," said another.1933, Ishbel Ross, Marriage in Gotham, page 71
    • An author has the obligation of keeping himself alive, and it does not put any butter on his bread to get his books from the public library.1934, America - Volume 50, page 282
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see put, butter, bread.

Forms of put butter on one's bread

third-person singular presentputs butter on one's bread
present participleputting butter on one's bread
past participleput butter on one's bread
pastput butter on one's bread

Questions about put butter on one's bread

What does put butter on one's bread mean?
Put butter on one's bread means to earn money.
What part of speech is put butter on one's bread?
Put butter on one's bread is a verb.
What is the past tense of put butter on one's bread?
The past tense of put butter on one's bread is put butter on one's bread.

Words near put butter on one's bread in the dictionary

  1. put back
  2. put batteries in someone's back
  3. put before
  4. put behind one
  5. put bread on the table
  6. put butter on one's bread
  7. put by
  8. put case
  9. put daylight between oneself and someone
  10. put down
  11. put down as

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: put butter on one's bread (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-put butter on one's bread.wav.

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