button up

verb

1. to fasten (a garment) with a button or buttons

2. informal,  to conclude (business) satisfactorily

3. slang,  taciturn; silent and somewhat tense

Idioms and Phrases

Close securely, fasten, as in The house was all buttoned up , or Button up your coat—it's very cold . [Late 1500s]

Also, button one's lip . Hold one's tongue, keep quiet. For example, Please button your lip about the surprise . A variant of this usage, button one's mouth , dates from the 17th century. [Mid-1800s]

Finish successfully, as in I've got this report all buttoned up . [c. 1940]

Example Sentences

I think I hold the most back when I’m interviewing people on the red carpet, because I know I have to be buttoned up, and it’s about them.

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“He knows how to walk a deal through step by step to make sure that everything is complete and buttoned up,” Buss said, “and that’s exactly what happened.”

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While being escorted into the ceremony in the Capitol, eyes hidden behind her hat and coat buttoned up, she was a dead-ringer for H.G.

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It was all about the cool dark shirt, the leather jacket, the black suit button up… I asked myself “how am I gonna be different here and also comfortable?”

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“I feel like the women in her work were always messy and more complex and they were quite flawed or as buttoned up as the rom-com heroines of Hollywood’s golden age,” Kaplan says.

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Related Words

• beat 
• clinch 
• complete 
• cover 
• crown 
• eclipse 
• exceed 
• finish 
• surpass 
• wrap up