Buttry

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A small room in a house, college or monastery where food, drink and provisions are kept and sometimes served
2. A storeroom, often beside the kitchen, where supplies such as bread, ale and provisions are stored
3. An old-fashioned larder or pantry in which food and drink were kept, and from which they were dispensed

Etymology: The room at the heart of this word started out as a storeroom for drink, not butter. It descends from Old French "bouteillerie," a store for bottles, from "bouteille," bottle. The same family produced "butler," originally the officer in charge of the wine, so the word was tied to the cellar long before it meant a larder. Over the centuries the meaning drifted toward food and provisions, but the original sense survives in places that keep the old arrangements. In Oxford and Cambridge colleges, the buttery is still where students collect their meals and drinks, so the modern use keeps a trace of the wine-store origin. The spelling "buttry" is an older, variant form of the same word, and it shows how the word was pronounced as much as written.