collarbutton

plural collarbuttons

1. alternativeAlternative form of collar button.

   She was peddling trinkets amongst the wharf-loungers—pocket combs, little round mirrors, shoestrings and collarbuttons.

   1897 August 21, Frank Norris, “The House With the Blinds”, in The Wave, volume XVI, number 34, San Francisco, Calif., page 5, column 2

   5 more examples

   The time of production was shortened under machine labor comparatively with hand labor to about: ⅔ in the manufacture of fiowerpots,[…]; ¹⁄₁₅, seals, pitchforks, collarbuttons, threading pipe, canning fruit, cigars, dash boards, and iron pipe, wrought.

   1900 January, “Machine vs Hand Labor”, in Social Democracy Red Book, number 10, pages 98–99

   LENINE’S finish does not interest us especially, but we hope that Trotsky will live long enough to resume business in the Bronx, dispensing shoelaces and collarbuttons.

   1918 August 13, The Chicago Daily Tribune, volume LXXVII, number 193, page 6, column 3

   One has the feeling that these devouring industrial dinosaurs, wreathed in cruel gusts of steam like Moloch, grind out collarbuttons or something equally puny.

   1927 March 7, The New York Telegram; quoted in Stanley Kauffmann and Bruce Henstell, editors, American Film Criticism: From the Beginnings to Citizen Kane: Reviews of Significant Films at the Time They First Appeared, New York, N.Y.: Liveright, 1972, →ISBN, pages 185–186

   I could hypnotize myself into a belief that souls were “lost,” like collarbuttons under a bureau, and I was the one man to rescue them.

   1930, Elbert Hubbard II, editor, The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard, New York, N.Y.: W[illia]m H. Wise & Co., page 149, column 2

   In the hold of his schooner he loaded the entire stock of his store—all the canned goods, the rubber boots, the caps and needles and small tools, the fireworks and calendars, even the glass-fronted showcases where he kept gold-plated collarbuttons and cigarette lighters.

   1954, John Steinbeck, “What Happened in Between”, in Sweet Thursday, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →LCCN, page 10