buttony

comparative more buttony · superlative most buttony

1. Having a large number of buttons.

   1869, W. S. Gilbert, “Bob Polter” in Bab Ballads, p. 179, “And will my whiskers curl so tight? My cheeks grow smug and muttony? My face become so red and white? My coat so blue and buttony?

   3 more examples

   That carriage came round to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy’s and Jos’s visiting-cards […]

   1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, “60”, in Vanity Fair […], London: Bradbury and Evans […], published 1848, →OCLC

   […] the inconsistent woman fell upon his buttony breast weeping copiously.

   1873, Louisa May Alcott, chapter 16, in Work: A Story of Experience, Boston: Roberts Brothers, page 372

   That night I lay on a buttony mildewed company mattress between my favorite sheets.

   1997, Kate Wheeler, “Improving My Average”, in Not Where I Started From, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 5

2. Resembling a button or buttons.

   […] something a little doggish peeped out of the black buttony eyes, a hint of the seraglio.

   1938, Graham Greene, Brighton Rock, London: Heinemann, published 1962, Part 2, Chapter 2, p. 83

   3 more examples

   The Stalactical, is generally of a brassy colour; and so is the blistered buttony Ore, which is protuberant in a semi-circular form […]

   1778, William Pryce, chapter 3, in Mineralogia Cornubiensis: A Treatise of Minerals, Mines, and Mining, London: for the author, page 62

   Tietjens paused and aimed with his hazel stick an immense blow at a tall spike of yellow mullein with its undecided, furry, glaucous leaves and its undecided, buttony, unripe lemon-coloured flowers.

   1924, Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not ..., Part 1, Chapter 6

   […] the street had been widened at the expense of a row of sycamores whose blotched bark and buttony seed pods had seemed oddly toylike to him, as if God were an invisible playmate.

   1993, John Updike, “The Black Room”, in Prize Stories 1995: The O. Henry Awards, New York: Doubleday, published 1995, page 279

   1. Not fully grown and matured; overly small and insufficiently juicy. (of berries)

      Some seasons a large number of berries are buttony.

      1917, F. W. Dixon, Small Fruit Plants Annual Catalog, Holton, Kansas, page 8

      1 more example

      But the little dinky, buttony or warty berries must not be packed at all.

      1912, P. M. Kiely, Southern Fruits and Vegetables for Northern Markets, St. Louis, Missouri, page 157

   2. Full-berried. (of hops)

1. uncountableThe manufacture of buttons.

   Whenever we inquired of the village girls what their occupation was, almost invariably the quaint answer ‘We do buttony’ was given.

   1906, Lady Dorothy Nevill, chapter 3, in Ralph Nevill, editor, The Reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill, London: Edward Arnold, page 33

   3 more examples

   From this time onwards ‘buttony’, or making buttons, gradually became an important industry at which many people earned their livings.

   1958, Agnes Allen, chapter 12, in The Story of Clothes, New York: Roy Publishers, page 113

   […] she busied herself in the front room, rustling about in Anne Kellaway’s box of buttony materials filled with rings of various sizes, chips of sheep horn for the Singletons, a ball of flax for shaping round buttons, bits of linen for covering them, both sharp and blunt needles, and several different colors and thicknesses of thread.

   2007, Tracy Chevalier, Burning Bright, New York: Dutton, Part 4, Chapter 4, p. 126

   Catastrophically for Dorset buttony, Ashton's buttonmaking machine was invented in 1850 and proudly exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851. As a consequence of this invention, the Dorset cottage industry collapsed virtually overnight […]

   2010, David Hilliam, Little Book of Dorset

   Synonyms: buttonmaking

2. ScotlanduncountablegamesA children’s game played with buttons.

   1 more example

   She collected all her treasures, the bottle with the brass top that she had got from Shovel’s old girl, […] the pretty buttons Tommy had won for her at the game of buttony, the witchy marble, […] these and some other precious trifles she made a little bundle of and set off for Double Dykes with them, intending to leave them at the door.

   1896, J. M. Barrie, chapter 15, in Sentimental Tommy, London: Cassell, page 172