Yes, I am grateful for tweezers. A handy little tool to remove splinters, really small things, unwanted hairs. Okay fine, I'm grateful for them for the unwanted hairs. Dear me, the older one gets the more hairs start appearing in random places and need to be removed. And no, I'm not telling you where because then you'll be looking at me trying to figure it out. Hopefully I keep on top of it and nobody notices. *wink* Yeah, that's a bit of vanity speaking. But whatever. I am grateful for tweezers because they help keep me at a comfortable vanity level. Ha!
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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