I'm grateful for good shoes today. Shoes that support my aging arches *grin* and pad my feet from the hard ground. I'm grateful for shoes that help me walk distances and give me support when I'm standing still for long periods of time. I don't take the fact that I have access to good shoes lightly. I am all too aware of people around the world who have no shoes at all and no hope of having shoes, much less good ones. I'm grateful for good shoes and I look for ways to help those who need them as well get them.
There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.
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