A couple of years ago I offered to be the one in the family to organize and digitize my paternal grandparents old photos and slides. Today I finally pulled them out of the box and started sorting through. I was motivated by a Groupon I bought for scanning AND a co-worker whose parents had a house fire last month and lost most everything. But as I started sifting through and identifying people, some of whom I have never met in person but know from stories and pictures, I became grateful - again - for family history. For the roots I come from. To look at people and see similar features or to interact with them and have similar characteristics speak of a history. To share a look or an inside joke is a shared history. All of these things I had renewed gratitude for as I looked at these people who I share a lifeline with.
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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