Buttonhook

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A hook for pulling the buttons of gloves and shoes through the buttonholes. historical

    "‘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.’"

  2. 2
    a hook for pulling a button through a buttonhole wordnet
  3. 3
    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[…]."

  4. 4
    A hook used to pull thread through the holes of a button.
Verb
  1. 1
    To perform the buttonhook play.

Example

More examples

"‘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.’"

Etymology

From button + hook.

Related phrases

line of scrimmage

More for "buttonhook"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.