buttonholing

Verb

buttonhole (third-person singular simple present buttonholes, present participle buttonholing, simple past and past participle buttonholed)

1. (colloquial, transitive) To detain (a person) in conversation against their will.
   • He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the ancient mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight...1880, Mark Twain [pseudonym] (Samuel L[anghorne] Clemens), chapter XXVI, in A Tramp Abroad; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 265

   Synonyms:

   accost, waylay

2. (ambitransitive) To cut one or more buttonholes (in).
3. (transitive) To sew by buttonhole stitch.
4. (archaic, transitive) To make a small slot-like incision in (intentionally or unintentionally).
5. (rare, transitive) To apply a flowery formation in.
   • What tree of more pulchritude and symmetricalness could you nominate for roadside, street and public park planting than the graceful linden? We should possess more of the spirit which predominates in this direction in the crowning gem of America’s constitutionality—the City of Washington, D. C....1871 December 17, Henry K. Staley, “Forestry and Apiculture”, in The American Bee Journal, volume 28, number 25, pages 781b of 779a–782b
6. (archaic, intransitive, rare) To attain buttonhole-like formations on cutting.
   • Furze cut it himself after his dinner, with great care and concentrated solemnity, finding the loaf rather too new and the knife too blunt for the carving of slices of ideal thinness. The beastly things would buttonhole!1927, Warwick Deeping, Doomsday, page 77

See all 13 meanings of buttonhole