noun

• (medicine, attributive) A use of surgical tape, cut into thin strips and placed across an open wound to hold it closed.
  "butterfly tape; butterfly bandage; butterfly strips"
• (swimming) The butterfly stroke.
• (in the plural) Ellipsis of butterflies in one’s stomach (“A sensation of excited anxiety felt in the stomach”).
  "I get terrible butterflies before an exam."
• (now rare) Someone seen as being unserious and (originally) dressed gaudily; someone flighty and unreliable.
  "He was affable; therefore he was frivolous. The women liked him; therefore he was a butterfly."

verb

• (transitive) To cut (food) almost entirely in half and spread the halves apart, in a shape suggesting the wings of a butterfly.
  "butterflied shrimp"
• (transitive) To cut strips of surgical tape or plasters into thin strips, and place across (a gaping wound) to close it.
  "After everyone had obeyed his commands, the lieutenant motioned for two medics that now appeared to enter the room and attend to Dr. Carter. They bandaged him up, butterflying some of the deeper gashes and gave him a couple of shots."
• (transitive, of the point of divergence of an alternate history scenario) To cause events after the point of divergence to not happen as they did in real history, and people conceived after the point of divergence to not exist in recognizable form, due to the random variations introduced by the butterfly effect.
  "Pearl Harbor not happening would've butterflied Taylor Swift."