buttonholed
- past participle of buttonhole.
- past tense form of buttonhole.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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
At the lighting ceremony, a non-Jewish man buttonholed the rabbi to thank him for procuring badly needed heart medicine for him during a spate of intense bombardment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2023
There, he was buttonholed by people wanting to talk about their portfolios and the soaring NFT market.
From New York Times ● Aug. 27, 2021
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
