DCHP-1 Online

butte [< Cdn F < F butte hillock]

• 1 n. a conspicuous isolated hill, often with a flat top, found in many areas, but especially common in southern Alberta.

  • 1804  (1890)  My canoe got to the Butte de Sable, at the entrance of Osnaburgh Lake. . . .
  • 1852  . . . we passed the smaller Balsam Fir Island, below which there is a pretty little bute on the left. . . .
  • 1944  The winding Bow, the dusty Badlands, and the Sweetgrass buttes. . . .
  • 1962  A detached low mountain is a "butte". . . .

• 2 n. a low, rounded rock mountain of the Nahani country of northern British Columbia and the Northwest Territories,

  • 1963  . . . I was told by several Metis who spoke the Athapaska dialects that the actual meaning [of Nahani] was "people fo the buttes," a butte in that section of Canada being a low, rounded mountain.