A dairy food made by churning cream.
A familiar word, four lives.
Simplified path. The puzzle showed the main steps; the full route is being checked.
Greek
boutyron
‘Butter’
into Latin
Latin
butyrum
‘Butter’
into Old English
Old English
butere
‘Butter’
became English
English
butter
‘The dairy food’
Greek boutyron passed into Latin as butyrum and into Old English as butere. The modern spelling looks ordinary enough to hide this long borrowing history. These cards select four forms while leaving out intermediate English spellings.
These are selected stages, not every spelling or intermediary. The story identifies omitted links; older forms did not all disappear at once.
Even a very everyday food word can have travelled through several languages.