buttonhook

A hook for pulling the buttons of gloves and shoes through the buttonholes.

Noun

  1. A hook for pulling the buttons of gloves and shoes through the buttonholes.
    • ‘I'm sorry we are so late,’ he was saying. ‘We couldn't find a button-hook, so it took us a long time to button our boots.’ - 1920, DH Lawrence, Women in Love, Vintage, published 2008, page 14:
    • Hustlers used to sell shoes like that to the greenhorns fifty years ago with a buttonhook for a bonus. - 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 370:
  2. A play in which the receiver runs straight downfield, then turns back toward the line of scrimmage.
    • Yet the Bears never set up the deep patterns with a turn-in or a buttonhook[…]. - 1988 January 15, Ted Cox, “The Sports Section”, in Chicago Reader:
  3. A hook used to pull thread through the holes of a button.

Origin

From button + hook.

Forms

buttonhooks

Verb

  1. To perform the buttonhook play.

Forms

buttonhooks buttonhooking buttonhooked