“Butterfly” in English
- Middle English buterflie, Old English buttorfleoge (written citation 1000 C.E.)
The Oxford English Dictionary notes some old Dutch words “botervlieg” and “boterschijte,” and conjectures that butterflies’ excrement may have been thought to resemble butter, hence giving the name “butter-shit,” then “butter-fly”.
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary says perhaps the word comes from the notion that butterflies, or witches in that form, stole milk and butter (see German “Schmetterling” below).
“Butterfly” in other languages
| psyche | ancient Greek Also meant “soul” and “breath” (now “mind,” of course). Note that the human Psyche was lovers with the god Eros (at least until she did the forbidden, gazed at his sleep form using an oil lamp she lit); compare the sexual butterfly images in Nabokov’s _Ada_. There may also be a connection, based on shape, of butterflies with the Minoan labrys, or double axe of the Labyrinth. |
| petalouda | modern Greek Related to the words for “petal,” “leaf,” and “spreading out“. Note that the priestly garments described in Exodus 28:36 include the petalon or ziz, a plate of gold attached to the miter, which shines with God’s approval of a propitious sacrifice. Possibly derived from “pteroda” by anaptyxis and lambdacism: p tero da -> petaloudia where “ptero” of course means wing, and has come home to roost once again in butterflies in the scientific name Lepidoptera. |
| papilio/onis | Latin As in ancient Greek, the soul of a dead person is associated with the butterfly. Our word “pavilion,” a tent or canopy spread out like wings, comes from this word as does “papilionaceous”. Notice the Grimm’s Law of “p“->”f” in many of the words below, and the Hungarian aphaeresis. |
| papillon | French |
| fifoldara | Anglo-Saxon |
| fifalde | Old English |
| fifaltra | Old High German |
| fifrildi | Old Norse, modern Icelandic |
| farfalla | Italian The pasta, farfalle, often called “bow-ties” in the US, are really butterflies. |
| feileacan | Irish “feileacan oiche” is “night butterfly” i.e. “moth“. |
| mariposa | Spanish From “la Santa Maria posa” = “the Virgin Mary alights/rests“? (Recalling Psyche as butterfly?) Compare the ladybug or ladybird, “Our Lady’s bird“:
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| borboleta | Portuguese “mariposa” includes both butterflies and moths. |
| Schmetterling | German From “Schmetten,” an Upper Saxon dialect loan-word first used 16 & 17th C, from Czech “smetana,” both meaning “cream,” referring to butterflies’ proclivity to hover around milkpails, butterchurns, etc. Folk belief had it that the b’flies were really witches out to steal the cream. (As an aside, “schmettern,” among other things, means “to ring out, to warble, to twitter” — an aural analogue of how butterflies look in flight? Latin “pipilo/are” means “to twitter, to chirp,” after all. But the German, to my ears, sounds more like the sound a butterfly makes as a Prussian sort accelerates down the autobahn mashing it into a smear on the windshield.) “Tagfalter” is another name for butterfly, perhaps meaning “day-hinge” or “day-folder,” and “Nachtfalter” is a moth. These make semantic sense, or the “falter” part may instead reflect the Old High German “fifaltra” derived from the Latin. |
| sommerfugl | Norwegian “summerfly” (or is it “summerbird,” as a German “Vogel”” = “bird“?) |
| zomerfeygele | Yiddish “summerbird“ |
| babochka | Russian Pronounced “bah’ bch ka“, it also means “bow tie“. It’s a diminutive of “baba” or “babka” (= “woman, grandmother, cake“, whence also “babushka” = “grandmother” in English, “babushka” = “a grandma-style headkerchief“). |
| dushichka | Russian (regional dialects) Derived from “dusha” = “soul“. |
| pillango’/lepke | Hungarian |
| hu-tieh | Mandarin As the word for 70 (years) is “tieh”, the butterfly thus becomes a punning symbol of longevity. It also represents young men in love (whereas in Japan it is young maidenhood or marital hapiness). I do not know whether I was a man dreaming I was a butterfly, |
“Moth”
| moth | English English, cited in 950, from Scandinavian “mott” = “maggot“ |
| polilla | Spanish |
| traça | Portuguese Portuguese, “moth” or “silverfish“ |
| Motte | German |
| moell | Norwegian |
| moelur/moelfluga | Icelandic |
“Caterpillar”
| caterpillar | English “catyrpel” of 1440, derived from French “chatepelose” (?), meaning “hairy cat” (cf. “pile,” “pilose,” from Latin “pilus” = “hair“; “pill,” as in either medicine lozenge or fuzzball, like the hairballs cats regurgitate up, from Latin “pila” = “ball, originally knot of hair“). See also pussy willows and catkins, similar shapes and fuzzinesses associated with the feline. Or is it from “piller,” meaning “pillager/ravager,” and “cate,” meaning “food” (root of today’s “caterer“) , as caterpillars devour leaves? I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I send among you. |
| chenille | French From Latin “canicula,” diminutive of “canis” = “dog” . Thus English caterpillar is a hairy cat, and the French is a hairy dog. Meanwhile, the word “chenille” in English means a kind of thick fuzzy yarn that looks like a caterpillar! |
| eruca/ae | Latin Pliny uses this word to mean “caterpillar“, Horace to mean the garden cabbage “colewort” . This word in English also means “caterpillar,” as well as the garden herb “rocket“. |
| bruco | Italian (caterpillar, grub, maggot) |
| oruga | Spanish |
| lagarta/larva | Portuguese (“lagarto” = “lizard“) |
| larve/kaalorm | Norwegian (and “puppe” = “pupa“) |
| fifrildislirfa | Icelandic (and “pupuskeid” and “lirfa” = “pupa“) |
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