as in mountain
a type of hill with a flat top and steep sides that is found in the southwestern U.S.
The otherworldly sandstone buttes of Monument Valley, Arizona are well worth a visit.
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Recent Examples of butte
Courses are high-quality desert golf with lots of elevation changes, exposed rocks, and a few dramatic signature holes, most famously the third on the Mountain course, a short par-three with a tee on a cliff and the green atop a rocky butte.
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Larry Olmsted, Forbes.com, 19 Sep. 2025
The southern end of the park is known for its high concentration of petrified wood, but the northern end has jaw-dropping views of the Painted Desert, the colorful expanse of hills, buttes, and mesas in Arizona’s high desert.
—Lydia Mansel, Travel + Leisure, 6 Sep. 2025
No eyes, no nose, just a butte with shadows.
—Kaif Shaikh, Interesting Engineering, 4 Sep. 2025
Their conclusion from this is that the mesas and buttes are the remains of what was once a far larger plateau, which was largely eroded away on the side facing the northern basin.
—John Timmer, Ars Technica, 20 Jan. 2025
See All Example Sentences for butte
Recent Examples of Synonyms for butte
Noun
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But Smith’s international bona fides aren’t limited to the mountain.—
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Strongest winds will occur on the eastern slopes of the San Bernardino mountains.—
Noun
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Construction fell off a cliff after the housing bubble burst over a decade ago and never really recovered.—
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In Zumaia, Ermita de San Telmo, an iconic stop on the Camino de Santiago, is a 16th-century church perched on the rocky Flysch cliffs made famous in Game of Thrones.—
Noun
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Beyond cost, Purple Line development will face a high degree of difficulty because of the topography of mesas and valleys.—
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Petit Jean Mountain is the name commonly given to the large mesa on the south bank of the Arkansas River in Conway County.—
Noun
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The Napo is home to small communities of Kichwa people, whose ancestors came down from the Andean highlands centuries ago.—
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The shallow freshwater coursed lazily among the sawgrass, the water stretching from the Atlantic Coastal Ridge to the east to the highlands of what is now part of the Big Cypress National Preserve to the west.—
Noun
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Denise’s family was out on a foothill in a large, modern ranch house.—
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The Shooting The shooting began shortly after 12:30 p.m. at Evergreen High School, about 30 miles west of Denver in the foothills of Jefferson County.—
Noun
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The 25-year-old forward for the Carolina Hurricanes, who was once expected to anchor a middle-six center spot on a contending team, has seen his game plateau and then dip over the last few years.—
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Through 2024, large language models kind of hit a plateau, to some extent, in capability.—
Cite this Entry
“Butte.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/butte. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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