Buttons

How to spell buttons

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce buttons

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does buttons mean?

1. nounSmall discs or knobs that fasten clothing, or pressable controls on a device.
2. verbFastens something using buttons (third-person singular).

Buttons in a sentence

• noun

  Two of the buttons on his shirt had come loose.

• verb

  He always buttons his coat before stepping outside.

• noun

  The lift had buttons for every floor in the building.

• verb

  She buttons the cardigan right up to the collar in cold weather.

Where does buttons come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the Old French boton (also spelled bouton), which named both a small knob used to fasten clothing and the swelling bud of a plant, the idea in each case being something that pushes or thrusts outward. The French noun was built on the verb boter, meaning 'to push' or 'to thrust', a word that French itself had taken from a Germanic source related to the same root that gives English 'butt' in the sense of striking or shoving. English borrowed it in the 1300s, originally for the rounded fasteners on garments, and the meaning later widened to the pressable knobs on machines, lifts, and keypads. The same source survives in 'button' as a flower bud and in the rosebud variety still called a button in horticulture. The double t and the unstressed second syllable, which sounds like a faint 'un', are the parts writers slip on, since the spelling keeps a vowel where the ear hears almost nothing.

How the word is built

• button (from Old French boton: a bud, a knob)
• -s (plural / third-person verb ending)