It may seem fickle of me but I am a woman and our inner temperature controls are clearly very different than men. Right now it is 62 degrees in my house (at 6 am). I am delighted, I am finally comfortable. If it were winter and 62 degrees in the house I would be freezing! It makes no sense I know. But today I am grateful that on July 2 it is overcast, cool breezes are blowing, and my house is 62 degrees. I know warmer days are coming so for all you haters of our weather right now just hang on! It will turn around! :)
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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