Butter is a rich, creamy food made by churning milk or cream until the fat separates out and clumps together. When you spread butter on warm toast, it melts into a golden pool. When you add a pat of butter to hot vegetables, it makes them taste richer and more delicious.

For thousands of years, people have made butter by shaking or stirring cream in a special container called a churn. The constant motion breaks apart tiny droplets of fat in the cream, and those droplets stick together until they form solid butter, leaving behind a thin liquid called buttermilk. Today, machines do this work in factories, but some people still enjoy making butter at home by shaking heavy cream in a jar until it transforms.

Butter is also used in baking, where it adds flavor and helps create flaky pastries and tender cookies. Cooks sauté foods in butter, meaning they cook them quickly in a hot pan with melted butter.

Butter can also be a verb. To butter something means to spread butter on it.

The word appears in phrases too. To butter someone up means to flatter them, hoping they'll do you a favor. Something that works smooth as butter operates perfectly without any problems. And if you can't believe how easy something was, you might say it went like butter, meaning it was effortlessly smooth.