butterfly
[ˈbʌ.ɾɚ.flaɪ]noun, verb
butterfly is spelled B-U-T-T-E-R-F-L-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is butterly: about 270 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 118 of all searches for the word. Butterfly is a noun meaning “A flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, distinguished from moths by their diurnal activity and generally…”. The plural of butterfly is butterflies.
How many letters and syllables are in butterfly?
| Letters | 9: B-U-T-T-E-R-F-L-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 8.5 times per million words; the 7,910th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, butterly, about 270 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How do you spell butterfly?
Butterfly is spelled B-U-T-T-E-R-F-L-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 118 of the searches for butterfly in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is butterfly?
Butterfly appears 8.5 times per million words in written English, the 7,910th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce butterfly?
- /ˈbʌ.tə(ɹ).flaɪ/
- UK [ˈbʌ.tə.flaɪ]
- US [ˈbʌ.ɾɚ.flaɪ]
Butterfly has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-uk-a_butterfly.ogg, En-ca-butterfly.ogg, En-au-butterfly.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
What rhymes with butterfly?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as butterfly.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: flutterby.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of butterfly
- butterflies plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- butterflying participle, present
- butterflied participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does butterfly mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, distinguished from moths by their diurnal activity and generally brighter colouring.
- 2
The imago (final form) of such an insect, consisting usually of a long body with large flat wings, as opposed to earlier instars such as caterpillar or pupa.
- 3
A use of surgical tape, cut into thin strips and placed across an open wound to hold it closed.
butterfly tape; butterfly bandage; butterfly strips
- 4
The butterfly stroke.
- 5
Any of several plane curves that look like a butterfly; see Butterfly curve (transcendental) and Butterfly curve (algebraic).
- 6
Ellipsis of butterflies in one’s stomach (“A sensation of excited anxiety felt in the stomach”).
I get terrible butterflies before an exam.
- 7
archaicSomeone seen as being unserious and (originally) dressed gaudily; someone flighty and unreliable.
- 8
A combination of four options of the same type at three strike prices giving limited profit and limited risk.
verb
- 1
To cut (food) almost entirely in half and spread the halves apart, in a shape suggesting the wings of a butterfly.
butterflied shrimp
- 2
To cut strips of surgical tape or plasters into thin strips, and place across (a gaping wound) to close it.
- 3
To cause events after the point of divergence to not happen as they did in real history, and people conceived after the point of divergence to not exist in recognizable form, due to the random variations introduced by the butterfly effect.
Pearl Harbor not happening would've butterflied Taylor Swift.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Butterfly in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | papillon , pansement papillon |
| German | Schmetterling, Falter, Tagfalter, Summervogel, Fifalter, Waifåita |
| Portuguese | borboleta, panapaná |
| Spanish | mariposa |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.