English

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Etymology

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From button +‎ -like.

Adjective

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buttonlike (comparative more buttonlike, superlative most buttonlike)

  1. Resembling a button.
    • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “-Epliogue”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
      [] I was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve.
    • 1922, E. E. Cummings, chapter 7, in The Enormous Room[1], New York: Boni and Liveright, page 153:
      [He] was smoking slowly and calmly, and looking at nothing at all with his black buttonlike eyes.

Synonyms

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