An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/Butter
Butter, feminine, ‘butter,’ from the equivalent Middle High German buter, feminine, masculine, late Old High German butera, feminine; the same medial dental appears in Dutch boter, Anglo-Saxon butere, English butter. This necessitates the assumption that the High German word was first introduced into Germany about the 10th century. It is derived, though changed in gender (der Butter, however, is common to the Upper German dialects), from the Romance-Middle Latin butyrum (whence French beurre, Italian burro), late Greek-Scythian βούτυρον. Yet the art of making butter was known in Germany ere the introduction of the term from the South of Europe. Butter was called Aufe, as is still the case in Alemannian; compare Anke and Kerne; perhaps the process in the south was different, and with the new method came the new term. The art of making cheese may have found its way earlier, even before the middle of the 9th century, from the South of Europe to the North. See Käse.