Word.ws English Dictionary

button man

button man noun: a contract killer; a professional assassin.

Noun

button man (plural button men)

  1. (slang) A contract killer; a professional assassin.
    • I was called a "buffoon" in the paper of record, the New York Times, and the Washington Post described me fondly as "Clinton's gunsel," his button man2000, James Carville, Stickin': The Case for Loyalty, page 13
    • "Twenty years ago, he was Little Pete Drago, a button man for the boys on Mulberry Street. He's probably got twenty notches on his piece2000, Stuart Woods, Worst Fears Realized, page 177

Forms of button man

pluralbutton men

Questions about button man

What does button man mean?
Button man means a contract killer; a professional assassin.
What part of speech is button man?
Button man is a noun.
What is the plural of button man?
The plural of button man is button men.

Words near button man in the dictionary

  1. button it
  2. button lift
  3. button lifts
  4. button lock
  5. button locks
  6. button man
  7. button mangrove
  8. button mangroves
  9. button mash
  10. button mashed
  11. button masher

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: button man (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “button man.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/button_man. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.