'butterfingers' originates from English as a humorous compound of 'butter' + 'fingers', where the image evokes fingers so slippery they might be covered with butter.

'butterfingers' is a 20th-century English slang formation (chiefly American), created by combining 'butter' and 'fingers' to form a playful epithet for someone who drops things; it entered informal usage and print in the early 1900s and has remained slang.

Initially, it literally suggested 'fingers slippery as if covered with butter'; over time it evolved into the figurative current meaning of 'a clumsy person who often drops things', used chiefly in jest or mild reproach.