Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to interfere, to make a nuisance of oneself.

1899		Ade Fables in Sl. 49: One Student [...] whose people butt into the Society Column with Sickening Regularity.
1902		‘Billy Burgundy’ Toothsome Tales Told in Sl. 68: He used to [...] butt in to see Maxine.
1915		‘Ian Hay’ First Hundred Thousand (1918) 214: As yet we have received no invitation to ‘butt in’.
1925		G.M. Cohan Twenty Years on Broadway 46: Josie started high-signing me again to quit ‘butting in’ .
1934		Wodehouse Right Ho, Jeeves 60: Don’t you start butting in.
1941		K. Tennant Battlers 253: It’s a wonder he ain’t been a bloody deceased corpse himself before now, the way he butts in.
1953		A. Buckeridge Jennings’ Diary 69: What did you want to butt in and make me waste my last shot for?
1964		Larner & Tefferteller Addict in the Street (1966) 154: My husband didn’t butt in too much.
1972		Nova Apr. 95: I don’t want to butt in.
1978		J. Webb Fields of Fire (1980) 185: Assholes here ain’t got any right to butt in. So butt the hell out!
1989		R. Dahl Rhyme Stew (1990) 12: Her Ladyship butts in and yells, / ‘The cat is right! That’s not the bells!’.
1999		Guardian G2 2 Aug. 7: I feel impelled to butt in. But my child is now 20 and can manage without her mother.
2002		‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 40: And Sugar Lips was bout to sign one ah them contracts when somethin butted in.

2. to arrive.

1901		‘Hugh McHugh’ Down the Line 48: She’d have a happier time if we tramped down to the tunnel and butted in among the Italians just as the twelve o’clock whistle blew.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 176: It wasn’t every tenderfoot who butted into a mining country and made good.
1934		H. Roth Call It Sleep (1977) 148: A raw jade like yourself ought to learn a little more before she butts into America.
1961		‘Frank Richards’ Billy Bunter at Butlins 109: Like your cheek to butt in here at all, in my Holiday Camp.
1982		N. Keesing Lily on the Dustbin 96: That ‘jumped up’ young woman from the new house ‘down the road’, a real ‘parve’ (parvenue) or ‘Johnny come lately’, ‘butted in’ and got served out of turn by the ‘skirt happy’ butcher’s offsider.