button
Pluralbuttons
Verbbuttons, buttoning, buttoned
Pluralbuttons
Formsbuttons, buttoning, buttoned
- 1A small mechanical part pressed with a finger to open or close an electric circuit or to set a mechanism in motion.
He held the button down until the laptop restarted.
The crosswalk buttons at that intersection haven't worked in years.
UsageYou press or push a button, or hold it down; at the push of a button means instantly and easily.
- 2A knob or disk used as a fastener by being slipped through a loop or buttonhole.
A loose button dangled from the cuff of his shirt.
Vintage coats often have buttons made of carved horn.
UsageButtons are sewn on, done up and come undone, and a loose one can come off.
Note
In the American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897), the buttons on a man's shirt-front stand for something too ordinary to notice, which is how the word usually sits in a sentence.
- 3An on-screen control that can be clicked or tapped to trigger the function attached to it.
Click the Submit button to upload your application.
The designer made the buttons bigger so people could tap them easily on their phones.
UsageYou click or tap it, and it is usually named by its label: the Submit button.
- 4To fasten clothing with a button or buttons, or (of a garment) to be fastened in this way.
He paused to button his shirt before answering the door.
The tailor buttoned the jacket to check the fit across the shoulders.
UsageOften with up: button up your coat or button your coat up. With a pronoun, say button it up.
Similarfasten
Oppositeunbutton, unfasten, undo
Note
Adding up stresses completeness. Dickens, in Nicholas Nickleby, has a man "buttoned up to the throat in a light green coat," fastened from top to bottom, and the picture is one of stiffness as much as warmth.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Charles Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby contains the quoted description; it is narration rather than a character's speech. gutenberg.org
- 5A badge worn on clothing, attached by a pin pushed through the fabric.
He pinned a campaign button to his jacket before the rally.
Her backpack was covered in buttons from concerts and protests.
UsageOften campaign button; British English usually says badge.
Note
In the US the word covers anything from a slogan pinned on for an election, such as a bright yellow "Vote Smart," to concert souvenirs crowding a backpack.
- 6
Less common meanings
- 7The means of initiating a nuclear strike or similar catastrophic event; generally used with 'the.'
Campaign ads asked whether voters trusted the candidate with his finger on the button.
One misread radar signal could have sent someone reaching for the button during the Cold War.
UsageUsually the button, in a finger on the button or press the button.
Similartrigger
Note
"Weird Al" Yankovic's "Christmas at Ground Zero" (1986) announces its doomsday early on, with word that someone has already pushed it. No launch hardware is described; the button simply stands for the decision to start a nuclear war, which is how the word usually works with the.
- 8
- 9The head of a mushroom that has not yet expanded.
A firm white button holds its shape in cooking better than an open cap.
The forager left the buttons alone so their caps could open and drop spores.
- 10The center, or bullseye, of the house: the ringed target area in curling.
The skip called for a draw straight to the button.
Their final shot tapped the opposing stone off the button to steal the end.
Note
Curlers aim at it and talk around it constantly. A skip calls for a draw to the button, a stone sits on the button, and a shot that taps an opponent's stone off it can steal the end. Because the house is measured outward from this center, a stone centered exactly on it is as close as a stone can get.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Curlers aim for the button, and the skip directs shots such as draws. curlingontario.ca
- Stones can occupy the button, and tapping an opponent's stone backward can help produce a steal. curling.ca
- Distances used to compare scoring stones are measured from the house's exact center. curling.ca
- Covering the central area does not guarantee exact centering. Even stones covering the center pin can have different distances from their centers to the pin; last-stone draws use triangulation to measure them. worldcurling.org
- 11In poker, the disk marking the player in the dealer's position, who acts last in each betting round after the flop; also the player or seat holding it.
The dealer slid the button one seat to the left before dealing the next hand.
Casinos use a weighted button so it doesn't slide off the felt between hands.
Note
In casinos, the disk marks a seat rather than a job. It normally moves one place to the left after each hand, and whoever sits behind it acts last after the flop, which makes it the most advantageous seat at the table. Dealer's button is the fuller name.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- In casinos with a house dealer, the disk marks a seat rather than the person actually dealing. en.wikipedia.org
- It normally moves one place left after each hand; dead-button rules create exceptions. assets.wsopcdn.com
- The button player acts last in betting rounds after the flop. en.wikipedia.org
- The button is the most advantageous position. en.wikipedia.org
- 12In comedy and scriptwriting, a final joke or punchy line that closes a sketch, set, or scene.
He struggled in the middle of the set but landed the button, and the crowd left happy.
Improv teams are taught to find a button quickly rather than let a scene drag on.
Similarpunchline
Note
Comedy writers treat it as something you put on a scene. Daniel Schindel's 2014 piece on Key and Peele quotes the aim "to always put a button on the scene." It is one of several names for an ending, alongside outs and stingers. Jessica Goldstein calls buttons "notoriously difficult to nail" because they must surprise while staying true to the sketch's game.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 5 facts
- Daniel Schindel wrote the cited piece about Key and Peele in 2014. lamag.com
- The article quotes the stated aim with this exact wording; the speaker is Keegan-Michael Key. lamag.com
- The quoted wording appears in Key's explanation of the show's approach to endings. lamag.com
- Jessica Goldstein describes sketch endings as notoriously difficult to nail. washingtonpost.com
- Goldstein says the ending should surprise while remaining faithful to the sketch's comedic game. washingtonpost.com
- 13The final segment of a rattlesnake's rattle, sitting at the very tip of the tail.
A rattlesnake with only a button cannot yet make a rattling sound.
Check for the button at the rattle's tip to tell whether any segments have broken off.
Note
Naturalists and newspapers do not always mean the same segment. Laurence Monroe Klauber's A Statistical Study of the Rattlesnakes notes that reports of a snake with "blank rattles and a button" usually mean only the last lobe of the string, even when the string is broken. The true button, at the tip of a complete rattle, may have been lost.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Laurence Monroe Klauber wrote A Statistical Study of the Rattlesnakes. biodiversitylibrary.org
- The relevant installment is VII, The Rattle, Part 1, published in 1940. The series began in 1936. sdnhm.org
- Klauber's passage distinguishes newspaper usage of button for the last remaining lobe from the true button, which may have been lost. en.wiktionary.org
- The quoted expression is exactly 'blank rattles and a button', and Klauber explains that button usually means the terminal lobe even on an incomplete string. en.wiktionary.org
- 14A slang term for the clitoris, used in informal and intimate contexts.
He traced slow circles around her button until her breath quickened.
She pressed two fingers against her button through the thin fabric.
UsageKept for intimate talk and erotic writing; in medicine or neutral talk, say clitoris.
Similarclitoris
- 15
- 16A professional assassin, particularly one carrying out killings on orders for a criminal organization; a button man.
Word on the street was that he'd worked as a button for the Outfit in the sixties.
The don skipped the negotiation entirely and simply sent two buttons.
Similarhitman, assassin, killer, gunman
Note
It is crime slang, probably clipped from button man, and it belongs in fiction and talk about organized crime. In Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola's screenplay for The Godfather Part II (1973), Fredo remembers Frankie Five-Angels "when he was just a 'button'," which places the word at the bottom rung: a soldier who kills on orders, not a boss.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola wrote the screenplay, and the quoted draft dates from 1973. dailyscript.com
- Fredo says the quoted words while remembering Frankie Five-Angels. en.wiktionary.org
- In the screenplay, a button is a starting-level soldier who kills on superiors' orders. dailyscript.com
- 17Any amount of concern or interest, however tiny, used in negative phrases such as not care a button.
As to that I did not care a button, but I had wanted to hear about Betty, and now her name was barely mentioned.
1922, Van Tassel Sutphen, In Jeopardy - 18A bud; the rounded, unopened growth from which a flower or leaf develops.
O queen Emilia, / Fresher than May, sweeter / Than her gold buttons on the boughs,
c. 1613, William Shakespeare, John Fletcher - 19A small white blotch on the coat of an otherwise colored cat.
- 20A raised pavement marker installed along a painted stripe to make the lane line easier to see and feel.
- 21The soft, blunt tip of a fencing foil, which keeps the point from wounding an opponent.
- 22The end of a runway.
- 23The pedicle, the bony projection on a deer's skull from which an antler grows and to which it attaches.
- 24A flattened spherical mass of glass attaching a stem to either its bowl or its foot.
- 25The near-semicircular projection at the top of the back plate of a violin-family instrument, where it meets the heel of the neck.
- 26The small knob at the lower end of a violin-family instrument that anchors the tailpiece loop; also called the endbutton.
- 27The calyx of an orange, the small leafy remnant at the stem end of the fruit.
- 28Someone who works with a swindler or seller to lure others in, for example by pretending to be an eager customer or winner.
- 29A pill of the sedative methaqualone, taken illegally to get high.
- 30A small bead of metal left behind in a crucible or on a cupel once a sample has been melted down during assaying.
- 31An old British measure of length equal to one twelfth of an inch.
- 32The knob at the frog end of a violin-family bow, turned to tighten or loosen the hair.
- 33One of the small separate segments that make up a head of garlic.
Showing meanings only.
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Origins
Old French boton (Modern French bouton) passed into Middle English as boton or botoun. The French noun came from the verb bouter or boter ("to push, thrust"), which ultimately had a Germanic source. Button is a doublet of Biden and beat.
Middle English had the verb as butonen or botonen, from Old French boutoner, matching the noun botoun.