butterfly

1. 1.

   diurnal insect typically having a slender body with knobbed antennae and broad colorful wings

   Broaderlepidopterous insect

   Narrowernymphalidringletdanaidpieridsulphur butterflylycaenid
2. 2.

   a swimming stroke in which the arms are thrown forward together out of the water while the feet kick up and down

   Synonymsbutterfly stroke

   Broaderswimming stroke

   Partsdolphin kick

Other forms of butterfly

plural

butterflies·

past tense

butterflied·

present participle

butterflying·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about butterfly

What does butterfly mean?

butterfly means "flutter like a butterfly". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in butterfly?

butterfly has 3 syllables: but-ter-fly. The stress falls on "but". In IPA it is /ˈbʌtɚˌflaɪ/.

What is another word for butterfly?

Close synonyms include chat up, flirt, dally, coquet, coquette. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is butterfly a common word?

butterfly is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with butterfly?

6 words rhyme with butterfly. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.