Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (orig. US gay) studiously masculine, of male or female homosexuals.

1932		‘R. Scully’ Scarlet Pansy 174: There was an elegant Miss Drexel-Bütsch of Philadelphia; also there were the Brown-Bütsches of New Rochelle (very classy indeed), and a whole Bütsch-Fuchs family in New York.
1950		C. Solomon Report from the Asylum in G. Feldman (ed.) Protest (1960) 137: in my corpulent forgetfulness, I no longer resembled a ‘butch’ fairy or ‘rough trade’.
1958		H. Greenwald Call Girl 119: Those call girls who engaged in overt homosexual behavior [...] alternated between the ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ roles.
1963		J. Rechy City of Night 97: I loved Chuck once [...] such a butch cowboy. [Ibid.] 181: A dike (a square shouldered butch lesbian).
1965		Guild Dict. Homosexual Terms 6: butch it up (v.): The act or effort of assuming the characteristics of one who is butch (q. v.); said of one who must do so in an effort to hide his homosexuality from his heterosexual friends.
1967		J. Rechy Numbers (1968) 16: […] ‘butch’ means very male and usually carries overtones of roughness.
1972		(con. 1965) E. Newton Mother Camp 110: You may be talking to one of the butchest queens in the world, but you still say, ‘Oh, girl’.
1975		K. Jay ‘A Journey to the End of Meetings’ in Jay & Young (1979) 453: They were not into butch/femme roles so prevalent in the fifties and sixties.
1988		P. Califia Macho Sluts 29: I love butch-looking women.
1992		D. Jarman diary 10 Nov. Smiling in Slow Motion (2000) 256: The repressive world in which I grew up, where the queens wittered: ‘He’s butch, she’s bitch’.
1993		Kennedy & Davies Boots of Leather (2014) 5: All commentators on twentieth-century lesbian life have noted the prominence of butch-fem roles.
2005		E. White My Lives 180: His disapproval of the American butch style didn’t keep him from being attracted to individual clones. [Ibid.] 282: Butch-femme role-playing might have approximated traditional male-female interactions.
2006		D. Seabrook Jack of Jumps (2007) 238: She thought Frances’s friend Beryl was a ‘butch lesbian’.
2009		P. Temple Truth 194: ‘No one hates you much. Just a select few.’ ‘Add this waiter,’ said Villani. ‘Loves you, pants on fire. So fucking butch’.
2010		K. Richards Life 168: Red, his butch gay chauffeur from Stepney. Red was a very nasty piece of work.
2010		(con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 188: Big black bubble-butted bitch-dykes like skinny white girls inside the joint.

2. (orig. US) heterosexual.

1949		‘Swasarnt Nerf’ et al. Gay Girl’s Guide 4: butch: Not homosexual.
1951		D.W. Cory Homosexual in America 106: The homosexual, in inner-group language, is likely to call a heterosexual girl a fish, and a man who is attracted only to women is butch, but neither of these words is considered derogatory.
1973		J. Justin Prisoner 41: Don’t you threaten me! You’re as camp as a row of tents yourself anyway. Trying to go butch.

3. of a woman (irrespective of sexuality), masculine, aggressive.

1967		G. Freeman Undergrowth of Lit. (1969) 123: Whereas Kismet is young [...] and Jackie Joyce frankly butch in spite of the long blonde wig.
1982		P. Bailey An Eng. Madam 81: There she was, looking butch and gloomy.
1999		Guardian Guide 5–12 June 55: Mercedes McCambridge’s extraordinary, butch, land-grabbing Emma Small.
2003		Eble Campus Sl. Nov.
2006		J. Ridley What Fire Cannot Burn 289: ‘You look butch, Eddi.’ ‘Excuse me?’ ‘Not dyke, butch. Tough.’.
2010		A. Steinberg Running the Books 48: She was a butch woman who inhabited a crisp, tucked-in polo shirt.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 136: He’s banging butch girls.

4. (orig. US) tough, manly.

1969		N. Cohn Awopbop. (1970) 94: He wasn’t tough and butch and boorish, he wasn’t one of the boys.
1970		San Diego Sailor 41: He would have been leery of asking for trouble among his butch pals.
1982		P. Theroux London Embassy 155: It was a Polish freighter, full of butch sailors.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 434: Billy came on butch.
1999		Observer 17 Oct. 15: The sequel to Grand Theft Auto [...] promises to be ‘bigger, butcher and better’ than the 1997 original.
2000		Indep. Rev. 7 Feb. 1: My big brother [...] would look quite threatening if he weren’t so pathetically speccy and puny and un-butch.
2011		Salon.com 20 Nov. 🌐 My actual father, a retired ironworker from Boston who makes a ponytail look positively butch.