What does butterine mean?
Butterine is a noun denoting an artificial substance made to resemble butter, typically manufactured from rendered animal fats or vegetable oils. The word rose to prominence in the late nineteenth century as a trade name for what was essentially oleomargarine — the new industrial alternative to dairy butter that emerged after the French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès developed a butter substitute from beef fat. Because it looked and spread like butter but cost considerably less, butterine found a ready market among working-class households, and it also provoked fierce opposition from dairy farmers, who successfully campaigned for labeling laws and taxes to distinguish it from genuine butter. Today the term is obsolete in everyday use, having been superseded by 'margarine', but it survives in historical writing about food regulation, advertising, and the economics of the late-Victorian grocery trade, where it stands as a vivid emblem of industrial food's first challenge to a traditional farm product.
nounA substance resembling butter, especially one manufactured from animal fats or vegetable oils; historically, an early trade name for oleomargarine.
- An artificial butter substitute, especially one made from animal fats (oleomargarine), common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
"By the 1880s, cheap butterine had begun to undercut dairy butter in the city's markets."
"The grocer stocked both imported dairy butter and the cheaper domestic butterine side by side."
"Regulators required that every tub of butterine be clearly stamped so customers would not mistake it for real butter."
Standard pluralization; the plural is rare since the word is mostly used uncountably or in historical contexts.
"Several brands of buterines were on display at the exposition."
Long before margarine had its modern name, it was sold under the trademarked label 'butterine' — and dairymen hated it so much they lobbied for laws to keep it off the table.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of butterine
The word 'butterine' is formed from 'butter', which derives via Old English 'butere' from Latin 'butyrum', itself borrowed from Greek 'boutyron', literally 'cow cheese'. The suffix '-ine' was added in imitation of chemical and commercial coinages of the era, signaling a manufactured analogue of a natural substance. It arose in the 1870s as a commercial name for oleomargarine in Britain and America, at a time when '-ine' endings were fashionable for new products. Its roots are thus shared with 'buttery', 'butyric', and other derivatives of the same Greco-Latin source.
Related word forms
How butterine is actually used
'Butterine' is largely historical and now rare, encountered mainly in discussions of food history or old legislation such as the US Butterine Act debates. In contemporary English, 'margarine' has entirely replaced it.
Easily confused with butterine
Butter is the natural dairy product churned from cream, whereas butterine is an artificial substitute imitating it.
Margarine is the modern generic name for butter substitutes, while 'butterine' was a specific nineteenth-century trade name for early versions of the same kind of product.