butterfly

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Any of numerous insects of the order Lepidoptera, having four broad, usually colorful wings, and generally distinguished from the moths by having a slender body and knobbed antennae and being active during the day.
• noun A person interested principally in frivolous pleasure.
• noun A swimming stroke in which a swimmer lying face down draws both arms upward out of the water, thrusts them forward, and draws them back under the water in an hourglass design while performing a dolphin kick.
• noun A race or a leg of a race in which this stroke is swum.
• noun A feeling of unease or mild nausea caused especially by fearful anticipation.
• transitive verb To cut and spread open and flat, as shrimp.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A local name for a mussel, Plagiola securis, found in the Mississippi river: so called from the shape of the valves. The shell is used in the pearl-button industry.
• noun The common English name of any diurnal lepidopterous insect; especially, one of the rhopalocerous Lepidoptera, corresponding to the old Linnean genus Papilio, called distinctively the butterflies. See Diurna, Rhopalocera, Lepidoptera, and Papilio.
• noun Figuratively, a person whose attention is given up to a variety of trifles of any kind; one incapable of steady application; a showily dressed, vain, and giddy person.
• noun A kind of flat made-up neck-tie.
• noun An herb otherwise called ragwort. Kersey, 1708.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Zoöl.) A general name for the numerous species of diurnal Lepidoptera.
• noun See under Asclepias.
• noun (Zoöl.) the ocellated blenny (Blennius ocellaris) of Europe. See Blenny. The term is also applied to the flying gurnard.
• noun (Zoöl.) a shell of the genus Voluta.
• noun (Mech.) a kind of double clack valve, consisting of two semicircular clappers or wings hinged to a cross rib in the pump bucket. When open it somewhat resembles a butterfly in shape.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A use of surgical tape, cut into thin strips and placed across an open wound to hold it closed.
• verb To cut almost entirely in half and spread the halves apart, in a shape suggesting the wings of a butterfly.
• verb To cut strips of surgical tape or plasters into thin strips, and place across a gaping wound to close it.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun diurnal insect typically having a slender body with knobbed antennae and broad colorful wings
• verb talk or behave amorously, without serious intentions
• noun a swimming stroke in which the arms are thrown forward together out of the water while the feet kick up and down
• verb flutter like a butterfly
• verb cut and spread open, as in preparation for cooking