So called because they were once supposed to increase the
butter of milk. No doubt those cows give the best milk that pasture in
fields where buttercups abound, not because these flowers produce
butter, but because they grow only on sound, dry, old pastures, which
afford the best food. Miller, in his Gardener's Dictionary, says
they were so called “under the notion that the yellow colour of butter
is owing to these plants.”
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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