For as long as I can remember I have been grateful for dusk. Something about the sky and its colors, something about the way the day is winding down sets me at ease. I begin to breathe a little slower, to unwind from the day that was all go since daybreak. At dusk, if only for a minute or two, I feel the softness of the world that surrounds me and I breathe deep with gratefulness.
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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