buttonhole

"Since I was born I have never experienced stable power supply. We call ourselves the giant of Africa but we can't fix electricity," complains Mr Adah as he works on a buttonhole.

From BBC ● Jan. 31, 2023

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

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

This opens the floor to everyone who has ideas — not just those with the loudest voices or the chutzpah to buttonhole leaders in passing to pitch their ideas.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 24, 2022

In anticipation of victory, he had broken his strict mourning and placed a red rose in the buttonhole of his lapel.

From "The House of the Spirits: A Novel" by Isabel Allende

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

Even in interviews, Arnhold educates, buttonholes, lobbies for her cause — graciously but inexorably.

From New York Times ● Aug. 8, 2023

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

Moon Orchid tugged at the first shirt for half an hour, and she folded it crooked, the buttonholes not lined up with the buttons at all.

From "The Woman Warrior" by Maxine Hong Kingston

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 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

Resident Caroline Aguirre, a retired parole agent, said she buttonholed one courier trying to deliver a bag marked with the name James on it and explained the order wasn’t for her.

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 15, 2023

Donors and others seeking access appear routinely at his private clubs in Florida and New Jersey, where they have buttonholed the president on the patio or golf course.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 24, 2020

And strangers who followed him about the streets and buttonholed him for unexplainable reasons.

From "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers

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

They’ve had mixed success buttonholing people on the street to pose.

From Washington Post ● Mar. 21, 2023

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 10, 2023

Gone were the theatrical hopefuls eagerly buttonholing visitors, and, with them, the barrage of fliers that can quickly weigh down a knapsack.

From New York Times ● Aug. 19, 2021

Take the legacy of 60s poets, for example, who cant help but write like him; syntactically careering around his blizzard of words, elbow-jolting crazily, clutching at each others earmuffs, buttonholing opportunity.

From Unmanned by Stephen Oliver