"butt heads" meaning in English

See butt heads in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: en-au-butt heads.ogg [Australia] Forms: butts heads [present, singular, third-person], butting heads [participle, present], butted heads [participle, past], butted heads [past]
Etymology: From the activities of some horned animals, which compete by butting, or hitting, their heads against one another. Head templates: {{en-verb|butt<> heads}} butt heads (third-person singular simple present butts heads, present participle butting heads, simple past and past participle butted heads)
  1. (idiomatic) To argue uncompromisingly. Tags: idiomatic Translations (argue uncompromisingly): 發生衝突 (Chinese Mandarin), 发生冲突 (fāshēng chōngtū) (Chinese Mandarin), kinastella (Finnish), ne pas se mouiller (French)
    Sense id: en-butt_heads-en-verb-X3J3eGxK Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 89 11 Disambiguation of 'argue uncompromisingly': 97 3
  2. To struggle against something that does not give way.
    Sense id: en-butt_heads-en-verb-PKIDeZz9

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for butt heads meaning in English (2.7kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "From the activities of some horned animals, which compete by butting, or hitting, their heads against one another.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "butts heads",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "butting heads",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "butted heads",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "butted heads",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "butt<> heads"
      },
      "expansion": "butt heads (third-person singular simple present butts heads, present participle butting heads, simple past and past participle butted heads)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "89 11",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "They always seem to butt heads when they end up talking about politics.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2018 November 21, Jocelyn Samara D., Rain (webcomic), Comic 1101 - Rose",
          "text": "Eventually, I just pieced it together, figuring your butting heads could probably be explained by a break up. Years of anime shipping trained me for this.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To argue uncompromisingly."
      ],
      "id": "en-butt_heads-en-verb-X3J3eGxK",
      "links": [
        [
          "argue",
          "argue"
        ],
        [
          "uncompromisingly",
          "uncompromisingly"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To argue uncompromisingly."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "sense": "argue uncompromisingly",
          "word": "發生衝突"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "fāshēng chōngtū",
          "sense": "argue uncompromisingly",
          "word": "发生冲突"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "argue uncompromisingly",
          "word": "kinastella"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "97 3",
          "code": "fr",
          "lang": "French",
          "sense": "argue uncompromisingly",
          "word": "ne pas se mouiller"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2021 May 29, David Hytner, “Chelsea win Champions League after Kai Havertz stuns Manchester City”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "For long spells, City butted their heads against Chelsea’s well-organised lines and the upshot was the end of their push to complete a treble.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To struggle against something that does not give way."
      ],
      "id": "en-butt_heads-en-verb-PKIDeZz9"
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-butt heads.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d8/En-au-butt_heads.ogg/En-au-butt_heads.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/En-au-butt_heads.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "butt heads"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English verbs"
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From the activities of some horned animals, which compete by butting, or hitting, their heads against one another.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "butts heads",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "butting heads",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "butted heads",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "butted heads",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "butt<> heads"
      },
      "expansion": "butt heads (third-person singular simple present butts heads, present participle butting heads, simple past and past participle butted heads)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English terms with usage examples"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "They always seem to butt heads when they end up talking about politics.",
          "type": "example"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2018 November 21, Jocelyn Samara D., Rain (webcomic), Comic 1101 - Rose",
          "text": "Eventually, I just pieced it together, figuring your butting heads could probably be explained by a break up. Years of anime shipping trained me for this.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To argue uncompromisingly."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "argue",
          "argue"
        ],
        [
          "uncompromisingly",
          "uncompromisingly"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To argue uncompromisingly."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2021 May 29, David Hytner, “Chelsea win Champions League after Kai Havertz stuns Manchester City”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "For long spells, City butted their heads against Chelsea’s well-organised lines and the upshot was the end of their push to complete a treble.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To struggle against something that does not give way."
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-butt heads.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d8/En-au-butt_heads.ogg/En-au-butt_heads.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/En-au-butt_heads.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "argue uncompromisingly",
      "word": "發生衝突"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "fāshēng chōngtū",
      "sense": "argue uncompromisingly",
      "word": "发生冲突"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "argue uncompromisingly",
      "word": "kinastella"
    },
    {
      "code": "fr",
      "lang": "French",
      "sense": "argue uncompromisingly",
      "word": "ne pas se mouiller"
    }
  ],
  "word": "butt heads"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-20 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (1d5a7d1 and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.