hotbutton

English

Noun

hotbutton (plural hotbuttons)

1. Alternative form of hot button
   • 1993, Connie Brown Glaser, Barbara Steinberg Smalley, More power to you, →ISBN, page 77:

     Listen for others' 'hotbuttons' and use them to your advantage.

   • 1994, Michael T. Jacobs, Break the Wall Street Rule, →ISBN:

     This time he focused his message on the economic hotbuttons of the average shareholder.

   • 2001, David Walsh, Dr. Dave's Cyberhood, →ISBN:

     By employing emotional hotbuttons, advertisers are trying to open you up and get inside.

   • 2005, Silke Binias, Symbol and Symptom, page 33:

     Who exactly is the notorious femme fatale, this fatal, evil, destructive woman with a long list of male casualties, who became the number-one linchpin of the feminist movement and one of the hotbuttons of feminist literary criticism?

2. (dated) An image or passage in an online screen or document that triggers an action.
   • 1995, Alfred Glossbrenner, Internet 101: a college student's guide, page 47:

     The Wide Area Information Service (WAIS, pronounced "wayz") lets you look for specific words or phrases in a file, while the Web (WWW) gives you files with hypertext hotbuttons built in.

   • 1995, History Microcomputer Review - Volume 11, page 29:

     Roberts copied the files he mentioned onto Tom's CDR, attached a hotbutton to the footnote, which appeared as a thumbnail photo of Roberts next to the footnote, and the hotbutton to his commentary file.

   • 1997, Gralla Preston, ZDNet Software Library 10,000, page 47:

     SimpleMU presents you with a dialog with hotbuttons and pull down windows for connecting and playing a game.

   • 2001 January 27, Richard Wingrove, “Combining two actions into one hotbutton?”, in alt.games.everquest (Usenet):

     Do I have to make some kind of link to another hotbutton, or is it possible to put abilities directly into socials?

Adjective

hotbutton (comparative more hotbutton, superlative most hotbutton)

1. Alternative form of hot-button
   • 1998, A. Magazine: The Asian American Quarterly:

     In California, which has become the bellwether state on hotbutton racial issues like affirmative action and immigration, it surprises me that I wasn't aware of the Asian bloodlines among my own roommates.

   • 1998 December 10, Greg Cooper, “Laker Quotes”, in alt.sports.basketball.nba.la-lakers (Usenet):

     No, you have just made the fatal mistake of letting me know that you have a hotbutton issue, that is all.

   • 2006, E. Joseph Schneider, Lara L. Hollenczer, The Principal's Guide to Managing Communication, →ISBN:

     Their issue may be the teaching of evolution, sex education, the role of religion in the classroom, or any of a dozen hotbutton topics.

   • 2015 June 11, Mr. B1ack, “Are liberals mostly”, in alt.politics (Usenet):

     Better leave out religious texts however or there'll be riots :-) But even that won't produce the "right" answer for a lot of our hotbutton issues.