collar button

See also: collar-button and collarbutton

English

Alternative forms

• collar-button, collarbutton

Noun

collar button (plural collar buttons)

1. A button for fastening a collar.
   • [192-?], Zim [Eugene Zimmerman], In Dairyland: And Foolish History of Horseheads, N.Y., →OCLC, page 77:

     Take a tip—Flat collar buttons don’t roll under the bed nor stick out like a wart on the back of your neck—Thomas & Messing 10c.

   • 1930 October 4, Joseph Faus, ““Oh, Miss Dentist!”: Being the ridiculous romance of Oliver Whidden, insurance salesman, who found his love in the cavity of a bad tooth”, in Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, seventeenth year, number 5286, Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., page six, columns 3–4:

     “I got that dimple from sleeping with my face on a collar button,” coldly explained the dentistress.

   • 2013, Will Storr, The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science, Picador, →ISBN, page 67:

     There are sporty ones with tracksuits, straight backs and gelled hair; slumping city types fresh from work with their collar buttons undone; solitary, lumpy, middle-aged guys; and an original hippy with orange trousers and a hat that is unnecessarily tall.

Derived terms

• collar-button abscess

Translations

button for fastening a collar

• Finnish: kauluksennappi

References

• “collar button”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “collar button”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• “collar button”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.