buttons

• IPA^(key): /ˈbʌtn̩z/

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• Hyphenation: but‧tons

buttons

1. plural of button

buttons

1. The dung of sheep.
2. (colloquial) A remote control.
3. (colloquial, dated) A boy servant, or page.
   • 1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, Great Expectations […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, OCLC 3359935:

     A Custum' Us officer knows what to do with his Buttons, "said the Jack , repeating the obnoxious word with the greatest contempt , “when they comes betwixt him and his own light […] "

4. (slang) A policeman.
   • 1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, Penguin 2011, p. 78:

     ‘Go ahead, call the buttons. You'll get a big reaction from it.’

5. (colloquial) Synonym of marbles (“sanity; mental faculties”)
   • 2004, Jane Stevenson, The Empress of the Last Days (page 109)

     And we've got that other boy now, Ganesh something, I met him once, and I didn't understand a word he was saying, but the child seems to have all his buttons.

   • 2006, Frances Hunter, To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark (page 84)

     That night in his room before he'd left for New Orleans, Lewis had behaved like he didn't have all his buttons.

   • 2018, Cherry Wilson, Outcasts of Picture Rocks

     In the quaint vernacular of old Dad Peppin, Zion Jore might not have all his buttons, but he had more of what he did have than most men—more imagination to conceive a plot, more daring to carry it out, no fear to hamper him, […]

buttons

1. Third-person singular simple present indicative form of button

• IPA^(key): /by.tɔ̃/

buttons

1. inflection of butter:
   1. first-person plural present indicative
   2. first-person plural imperative