buttonhook

Etymology

From button + hook.

Why this word is great

BUTTONHOOK — [Noun] A small, curved tool designed to pull buttons through stiff or tight buttonholes, particularly on gloves and high-buttoned shoes. From button (a fastening device) + hook (a curved tool for pulling), its etymology is as bluntly functional as the object itself. Unlike a "crochet hook" (which weaves yarn into lace) or a "latch hook" (which knots fibers into rugs), the buttonhook exists solely to mediate the quiet struggle between fastening and unfastening. It is the cold metal nudge against a kid-leather glove at a Victorian dressing table, the stubborn twist of a mother’s wrist coaxing a child’s boot shut, the forgotten weight in a drawer full of obsolete rituals—proof that even the smallest acts of order require their own precise violence.

noun

  1. A hook for pulling the buttons of gloves and shoes through the buttonholes.“‘I'm sorry we are so late,’ he was saying. ‘We couldn't find a button-hook, so it took us a long time to button our boots.’”
  2. A play in which the receiver runs straight downfield, then turns back toward the line of scrimmage.“Yet the Bears never set up the deep patterns with a turn-in or a buttonhook[…].”
  3. A hook used to pull thread through the holes of a button.

verb

  1. To perform the buttonhook play.