Word.ws English Dictionary

buttoned-up

buttoned-up adjective: conservative.

Adjective

buttoned-up (comparative more buttoned-up, superlative most buttoned-up)

  1. (figuratively) Conservative.
  2. (figuratively) Carefully planned and executed.
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see button up.
    • A short, stout, puffed-up little man in a high pot-hat and a buttoned-up frock-coat and a chest-protector beard was sitting up behind a stump[.]1936, Norman Lindsay, The Flyaway Highway, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 74
    • It should be obvious by now that most of what goes on in the Bulova commercial does not depend very much on an appeal to the rational part of the mind—the “logos” of Aristotle. If it were to depend on such an appeal to the reason, it might show the same woman, but dressed sensibly in a nice...1989, William H[enry] Roen, “The Words of My Mouth”, in The Inward Ear: A Sermon Evaluation Method for Preachers and Hearers of the Word, Washington, D.C.: The Alban Institute, Inc., →LCCN, →OCLC...

Forms of buttoned-up

comparativemore buttoned-up
superlativemost buttoned-up
alternative formbuttoned up

Questions about buttoned-up

What does buttoned-up mean?
Buttoned-up means conservative.
What part of speech is buttoned-up?
Buttoned-up is an adjective.

Words near buttoned-up in the dictionary

  1. buttoned one's lip
  2. buttoned through
  3. buttoned up
  4. buttoned up one's lip
  5. buttoned-down
  6. buttoned-up
  7. buttoner
  8. buttoners
  9. buttonfront
  10. Buttong
  11. buttongrass

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buttoned-up (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: “buttoned-up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buttoned-up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.