Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an effeminate weakling.

1892		H. Nisbet Bushranger’s Sweetheart 108: Keep those cursed male butterflies from annoying her.
1943		‘Henry Green’ Caught (2001) 79: May God in his mercy strike every man of you cissies dead, you cloud of butterflies.

2. (US) an over-dressed, flashy person.

1902		Ade Girl Proposition 56: In his Heart of Hearts he wanted to be a Butterfly.
1983		R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

3. (US) a worthless cheque which ‘flutters away’; thus butterfly man, one who passed such cheques.

1929		Hotstetter & Beesley It’s a Racket 219: Butterfly—A worthless cheque; a check that is being ‘kited.’.
1932		Writer’s Digest Aug. 46: A butterfly man makes worthless cheques [HDAS].
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 38/1: Butterfly man. (Rare) One who issues or cashes bad checks.

4. (orig. US black) an attractive young woman [? ref. to black actress Thelma ‘Butterfly’ McQueen (1911–95) who played a weeping maid in the film Gone With the Wind 1939)].

1926		Truth (Brisbane) 1 Aug. 20/5: Alexander [...] hung around the Babylonian Gardens too much at night, and done in his dough on the Babylon butterflys. These baby vamps finished him.
1930		R. Whitfield Green Ice (1988) 34: Dot Ellis was played up as an example of a Broadway butterfly.
1944		D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 109: Getting all mixed up with those fine young butterflies that wanted to flutter but could only splutter.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

5. (US campus) a flirt; also as v.

1949		J.M. Cain [bk title] The Butterfly.
1961		(con. early 1950s) J. Peacock Valhalla 67: Koko had a steady at the U.S. Bar and it wasn’t like him to be butterflying.
1964		in Current Sl. (1967) I:4.

6. (also butterfly boy) an effeminate male homosexual.

1960		D. Hamilton Death of a Citizen 119: Underneath all the weird styling dreamed up by the butterfly boys, some real engineers had got together and concocted something quite commendable.
1968		K. Brasselle Cannibals 253: He looks like a fucking butterfly.
1972		(ref. to late 1950s) B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 72: stereotype effeminate homosexual [...] butterfly [boy] (hetero sl, late ’50s).
1979		Maledicta III:2 217: Latin homosexuals are perceived by others (and, to some extent, inevitably by themselves) as more fey than the [...] neo-macho English-speaking butch numbers who are more aggressive [...] and more confident than the butterflies and swishes of other climes.

7. (US gay) a black homosexual.

1980

Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 228: Miss Mabel, Prissy, Butterfly [...] and Snowball, all for a Sheena = black queen (from the comic-book Sheena, Queen of the Jungle).

8. (US Und.) a new, young and attractive prisoner, characterized as being potentially appealing to prison homosexuals.

1992

Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 8: Butterfly New arrivals, who are young and pretty, at a particular prison.

9. see floater n.¹ (1e)

10. see iron butterfly under iron adj.