buttoning

Pluralbuttonings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of button.

   She stood by the door, buttoning her coat slowly.

   Buttoning a stiff new shirt can be surprisingly difficult.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In she is buttoning her coat it carries the progressive, while in buttoning a stiff shirt is hard it acts as a noun. The verb also works without an object, for a garment that fastens with buttons, as in a dress buttoning down the back. Keep it apart from the noun for a row of buttons, which can take a plural, buttonings.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A fastening made with buttons, like the row that closes a shirt or coat.

   The dress featured an elaborate buttoning running along the back.

   A worn buttoning made the old shirt hard to fasten.

   Similarfastening, closure

   Note

   Unlike the verb form, this noun can be counted, so a garment may have several. Sir Walter Scott's Woodstock (1826) has a servant undoing the coarse buttonings of the leathern gamashes that protected a man's legs. The word names the whole arrangement of buttons rather than any single button. It sits naturally with verbs of fastening and undoing.

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