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Abbreviation vs Buttonhole - What's the difference?

abbreviation | buttonhole |

As nouns the difference between abbreviation and buttonhole

is that abbreviation is the result of shortening or reducing; abridgment while buttonhole is a hole through which a button is pushed to secure a garment or some part of one.

As a verb buttonhole is

to detain (a person) in conversation against their will.

abbreviation

Alternative forms

*

Noun

(en noun)
  • The result of shortening or reducing; abridgment.
  • (linguistics) A shortened or contracted form of a word or phrase, used to represent the whole, utilizing omission of letters, and sometimes substitution of letters, or duplication of initial letters to signify plurality, including signs such as, +, =, @.
  • The process of abbreviating.
  • (music) A notation used in music score to denote a direction, as pp or mf.
  • (music) One or more dashes through the stem of a note, dividing it respectively into quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, or hemidemisemiquavers.
  • Any convenient short form used as a substitution for an understood or inferred whole.
  • the phrase "civil rights" is an abbreviation for a whole complex of relationships. - Pres. Truman's comittee on Civil Rights
  • (biology) Loss during evolution of the final stages of the ancestral ontogenetic pattern.
  • (mathematics) Reduction to lower terms, as a fraction.
  • See also

    *

    References

    * * *

    buttonhole

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A hole through which a button is pushed to secure a garment or some part of one.
  • (chiefly, British) a flower worn in a buttonhole for decoration
  • Synonyms

    * (flower worn in the buttonhole for decoration): boutonniere

    Verb

    (buttonhol)
  • To detain (a person) in conversation against their will.
  • * Here they are, the brainless few we had been raised to pity and fear, the Stone Age oafs and the seething runts and the ominous, swaggering weightlifters, buttonholing kids like me out on Chancellor Avenue and telling us to keep our baseball bats at the ready in case we were called in the night to take to the streets [...] — " (2004)
  • * http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004291.html
  • Synonyms

    * : accost, waylay

    Derived terms

    * buttonholer