Editing Butterfly (section)

==Etymology==

[[File:Common brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni) male in flight.jpg|thumb|Possibly the original butter-fly.<ref name=BugsBritannica/> A male brimstone (''[[Gonepteryx rhamni]]'') in flight.]]

The ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' derives the word straightforwardly from [[Old English]] ''butorflēoge'', butter-fly; similar names in [[Old Dutch]] and [[Old High German]] show that the name is ancient, but modern Dutch and German use different words ({{lang|nl|vlinder}} and {{lang|de|Schmetterling}}) and the common name often varies substantially between otherwise closely related languages. A possible source of the name is the bright yellow male of the brimstone (''[[Gonepteryx rhamni]]''); another is that butterflies were on the wing in meadows during the spring and summer butter season while the grass was growing.<ref name=BugsBritannica>{{cite book |last1=Marren |first1=Peter |last2=Mabey |first2=Richard|author1-link=Peter Marren|author2-link=Richard Mabey |title=Bugs Britannica |date=2010 |publisher=Chatto and Windus |isbn=978-0-7011-8180-2 |pages=196–205}}</ref><ref>Donald A. Ringe, ''A Linguistic History of English: From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic'' (Oxford: Oxford, 2003), 232.</ref>