Word.ws English Dictionary

cough button

cough button noun: a button that temporarily stops the recording and transmission of a radio show.

Noun

cough button (plural cough buttons)

  1. A button that temporarily stops the recording and transmission of a radio show.
    • Mucho pressed his cough button a moment, but only smiled. It seemed odd. How could they hear a smile?1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, chapter 5, in The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 103
    • "Al pushed his cough button, stood up, punched the guy and knocked him flat on his back," recalls Gordon. "He absolutely poled the man. Then he pushed the button again and continued on with his newscast. People watching never knew anything happened."1987 March, Cincinnati Magazine, volume 20, number 6, page 51

Forms of cough button

pluralcough buttons

Origin of cough button

So called because the radio presenter might push the button when having to cough.

Questions about cough button

What does cough button mean?
Cough button means a button that temporarily stops the recording and transmission of a radio show.
What part of speech is cough button?
Cough button is a noun.
What is the plural of cough button?
The plural of cough button is cough buttons.

Words near cough button in the dictionary

  1. cougars
  2. cougarship
  3. Couged it
  4. cough
  5. cough and a spit
  6. cough button
  7. cough buttons
  8. cough candy
  9. cough down
  10. cough drop
  11. cough drops

Source and license

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