Word.ws English Dictionary

shea butter

US/ˈʃeɪ ˌbʌtɚ/

shea butter noun: a slightly yellowish or ivory-colored natural fat extracted from fruit of the shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) by crushing and boiling, widely used in cosmetics as a moisturizer and an emollient, as a cooking oil in West Africa, and sometimes used in the chocolate industry as a substitute for cocoa butter.

shea butter: a slightly yellowish or ivory-colored natural fat extracted from fruit of the shea tree (Vitellaria...
Image: Cathkidston, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

shea butter (usually uncountable, plural shea butters)

  1. (usually) A slightly yellowish or ivory-colored natural fat extracted from fruit of the shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) by crushing and boiling, widely used in cosmetics as a moisturizer and an emollient, as a cooking oil in West Africa, and sometimes used in the chocolate industry as a substitute for cocoa butter.
    • About two o'clock in the afternoon, a sort of hasty pudding, with a little Shea butter, is the common meal; but the supper constitutes the principal repast, and is seldom ready before midnight.1799, Mungo Park, chapter XXI, in Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, page 279
    • Shea butter is sold by hundreds of small firms who package and reformulate the butter under their own labels, purporting to by-pass the depersonalizing tendencies of mass-production and mass-marketing. […]2004, Brenda Chalfin, Shea Butter Republic, Psychology Press, →ISBN, page 179

shea butter meaning in Tamil

shea butter in Tamil

தாவர வெண்ணெய்

Forms of shea butter

pluralshea butters

Words formed from shea butter

Questions about shea butter

What does shea butter mean?
Shea butter means a slightly yellowish or ivory-colored natural fat extracted from fruit of the shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) by crushing and boiling, widely used in cosmetics as a moisturizer and an emollient, as a cooking oil in West Africa, and sometimes used in the chocolate industry as a substitute for cocoa butter.
What is shea butter in Tamil?
Shea butter in Tamil is தாவர வெண்ணெய். See Shea butter meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is shea butter?
Shea butter is a noun.
How do you pronounce shea butter?
Shea butter is pronounced /ˈʃeɪ ˌbʌtɚ/ (US).
What is the plural of shea butter?
The plural of shea butter is shea butters.

Words near shea butter in the dictionary

  1. she-wolf
  2. she-wolves
  3. she/he
  4. she/her
  5. shea
  6. shea butter
  7. shea butter tree
  8. shea butters
  9. shea tree
  10. shea trees
  11. Shead

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shea butter (page history and authors); shea butter (Tamil Wiktionary) (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)-Vealhurl-shea butter.wav.

Cite this entry: “shea butter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shea_butter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.