Nothing makes one grateful for instant hot water for a shower more than discovering there is only ice cold water that isn't warming up. It's a luxury I am grateful to have the opportunity to have on a near daily basis. And when the water is ice cold, because the luxury of the hot water heater we have isn't working correctly, I try very hard to keep it all in perspective - cold water isn't the end of the world, many people in this world only have cold water if they have any at all, and when I do have warm/hot water to not take it for granted.
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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