Word.ws English Dictionary

button up one's lip

button up one's lip is the alternative form of button one's lip.

Meaning of button one's lip

Verb

button one's lip (third-person singular simple present buttons one's lip, present participle buttoning one's lip, simple past and past participle buttoned one's lip)

  1. (idiomatic) To remain silent, especially in order to keep a secret or to avoid saying something inappropriate.
    • "Yes," put in Solomon. "I've been tipped off to this guy Mars, and you'd better tell him to button up his lip and not start anything."1910, Jim Nasium, "The Baseball League on the Styx," The Sunday Press (Pittsburgh), 15 May, p. 2 (retrieved 19 July 2010)

Forms of button up one's lip

third-person singular presentbuttons up one's lip
present participlebuttoning up one's lip
past participlebuttoned up one's lip
pastbuttoned up one's lip

Questions about button up one's lip

What is button up one's lip the alternative form of?
Button up one's lip is the alternative form of button one's lip.

Words near button up one's lip in the dictionary

  1. button spiders
  2. button squash
  3. button stick
  4. button through
  5. button up
  6. button up one's lip
  7. button willow
  8. button wrinklewort
  9. button wrinkleworts
  10. button-basher
  11. button-bashers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: button up one's lip (page history and authors); button one's lip (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 up one's lip.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/button_up_one%27s_lip. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.