buttons

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of button.

   The tailor replaced the worn buttons on the blazer.

   Rows of brass buttons gleamed on the soldier's uniform.

   Note

   The plural carries every meaning the singular has. It names fasteners on a coat, switches pressed on a machine, controls clicked on a screen, and, in American use, pin-on badges. Gardeners can also use it for buds. The same spelling is also the verb's present-tense form, as in "he buttons his coat." The surrounding words usually show which one is meant.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of button.

   The nurse buttons the patient's gown with care.

   He always buttons his jacket before a meeting.

   Note

   This present-tense form serves every use of the verb. It can take an object (he buttons his jacket), or it can describe a garment fastening (the dress buttons at the back). It also covers the informal sense of falling silent. Because the spelling matches the plural noun, check what follows: an object or a phrase about fastening marks the verb.

3. 3
   nouncolloquial

   A handheld remote control for operating a television or similar device.

   She set the buttons on the arm of the sofa during the movie.

   The kids fought over the buttons until the show finally started.

   Similarremote, clicker, zapper

4. 4
   nounslangcountable

   A police officer.

   The crowd scattered the moment the buttons turned onto the street.

   Two buttons questioned the witnesses outside the tavern.

   Similarcops, coppers, police

   Note

   Crime fiction gives this slang its best-known line. In Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (1939) a character sneers, "Go ahead, call the buttons," meaning the police as a body, much as one would say the cops. Like the page-boy sense, it names a person after the buttons on a uniform. It suits hard-boiled dialogue and period pastiche, but sounds out of place in plain reporting.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A person's sanity or mental faculties.

   Folks around town reckoned he'd misplaced a few of his buttons.

   She kept all her buttons right up to the end and ran the farm herself.

   Similarmarbles

   Note

   Sanity measured as a full set, like marbles. It appears almost always in the phrase have all one's buttons, usually doubted or denied: someone "didn't have all his buttons." Cherry Wilson's Outcasts of Picture Rocks (2018) calls the phrase "quaint vernacular." That fits its homely, half-joking tone. It works for teasing or folksy narration, not for discussing actual mental illness.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   The dung of sheep, which forms small round pellets.

   Scattered buttons marked the trail the sheep had taken up the hillside.

   The shepherd raked the buttons into a heap for the garden.

   Similardroppings, pellets, dung

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A small South African succulent of the genus Conophytum, covered in button-like fleshy leaves.

   She lined the rock garden with buttons whose paired leaves glistened in the sun.

   Collectors prize buttons for the bright flowers that emerge in fall.

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