buttonhole

For days as the historic floor fight played out, Mr. McCarthy had remained in his seat and dispatched allies to buttonhole the remaining holdouts privately.

From New York Times ● Jan. 7, 2023

Camilla appeared to take a sprig of flowers and put it in her buttonhole, which can be seen in the Christmas card photograph.

From BBC ● Dec. 11, 2022

She bounced around from L.A. factory to L.A. factory, avoiding wage theft and dodging sweatshops, before finally finding a job as a buttonhole operator on a production line, earning a decent wage.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 14, 2022

They have lunches, meet at conferences, buttonhole departmental women visitors, set up private Facebook pages and Slack channels, and are all over Twitter.

From Scientific American ● Mar. 25, 2022

Above it there was a small buttonhole, and in the buttonhole he placed the snowdrop, the glass flower that his father had given him as a luck token when he had left Wall.

From "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman

His red coat with black trim, red waistcoat with hand-stitched buttonholes and gold regimental buttons, and white breeches “represent the only complete uniform of the Revolutionary war.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 18, 2025

The golf stories are narrated by the “oldest member” of an upper-class golf club who buttonholes unwary younger members to regale them with his memories of golfers he has known.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2025

David Whelan said his brother must work at least eight hours a day, six days a week, on menial tasks like making buttonholes, which has caused him repetitive strain injury.

From Reuters ● Nov. 3, 2022

He buttonholes Bennedith and tells her a story about the time he was wronged by an evil nun with a maimed hand.

From New York Times ● Jul. 12, 2022

We made sweat lodges out of broken branches dug back into the earth, covered over with our shirts tied together at the buttonholes.

From "The Marrow Thieves" by Cherie Dimaline

Clare buttonholed Archer and, according to his own account, the would-be candidate burst into tears and asked that the story be quashed.

From BBC ● Oct. 5, 2026

Tegmark buttonholed Elon Musk at a 2014 MIT conference on space, after one of his students asked a question that prompted the billionaire’s now-famous quip that, with AI, “we are summoning the demon.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 4, 2026

At a moment of vulnerability, Harper is buttonholed by an old classmate named Sue.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 19, 2025

In one city in the region, Denain, a woman buttonholed him on a campaign stop with strong criticism about his presidency, his handling of the pandemic and schools.

From New York Times ● Apr. 20, 2022

A reporter from United Press buttonholed Al Ulbrickson on the way into the shell house and asked him what he thought of his boys.

From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown

Its tone and rhythms are oracular and epic, as if some ancient prophet is buttonholing you to tell you how the world has always been and will always be.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 2, 2026

But Mrs Kelsey's medical records, which BBC News has seen, show she suffered a great deal after she started buttonholing.

From BBC ● Mar. 15, 2024

Then Mr. Traum tried buttonholing people on the street.

From New York Times ● Jan. 31, 2024

A young William Boeing showed up day after day, buttonholing every pilot he could for a skyride.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 10, 2023

"You von't forget me," whispered Pinchas, buttonholing the editor at the first opportunity, and placing his forefinger insinuatingly alongside his nose.

From Children of the Ghetto A Study of a Peculiar People by Israel Zangwill