The paper offers a thorough phonetic discussion, word-formation classification and se­mantic analysis of the word-family of S.-Cr. batati botati, butati "to hit, heat, push, etc.", including the available references to their Slavic counterparts and PS1. prototypes which altogether corroborate the hitherto rarely expressed opinion that they are onomatopoeic by origin, and subsequently "normalized" to various extents, which is obvious from the semantic span of their postverbals: while the primary ones mostly feature meanings of verba instrumenti or verba acti (further developing into verba resultativa), their secondary derivatives include terms for a wide range of specific, concrete realia (sorted in pgfs. 5.2. through 5.2.5.1). Since the entire study is aimed at facilitating the lexicographic treatment of this vast and complicated word-family in the Serbian etymological dictionary (ERSJ), some practical repercussions of such an analysis are il­lustrated by homonymous nouns batl/bafi, bofl/bofi/bot3 and bufl/bufi viewed not only per se, but also as departure points for further derivation.