A Buttonhole Lower

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Evelyn. I’m calling from Wilmington, North Carolina.

Hey, Evelyn.

Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Well, there was an expression my parents used to use, and I’ve always been curious as to where it came from.

I’ve talked with my older sister, and she said, well, let me know what you find out.

So when we were growing up, if we were sassy to them at all or would talk back, she would say one of two things.

Either you’re getting too big for your britches, which I understood, but she would also say, I’m going to bring you down a buttonhole lower.

And we knew it was a threat, but as an adult, I’ve often wondered, well, what does that mean?

Where did it come from?

Where did the expression originate?

So that was my question.

Buttonhole lower.

So you may be surprised to find that the expression to bring someone down a buttonhole or a buttonhole lower is about 400 years old.

Wow.

Maybe more.

Actually, more like 500 now that I’m looking at it.

So the word buttonhole itself appears about 1530 or so before that garments were fastened in other ways.

But then by the middle of the 1500s, we have this expression popping up.

And it pops up in Shakespeare, too.

And it means basically to take someone down a peg, which is a good synonym for it.

Both of these are ways that you might fasten a coat or a cloak or an outer garment.

And as a matter of fact, we still have coats that fasten with pegs.

They look like horizontal wooden buttons and they kind of slide through the hole and you turn them sideways so that the button is one way and the slit is the other, right?

The buttonhole slit is the other.

We don’t know 100% for sure why people coined this, but we think it means to expose someone’s body in public, to embarrass them.

Because it was a time when propriety was a little different, when having a décolletage or having one’s skin exposed wasn’t the done thing.

And so if you undo their clothes by a button, imagine like jerking their clothes, the button pops, you’re embarrassing them.

You’re embarrassing them by exposing them or addressing them in public.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

That’s very fascinating.

I thought it was this, I don’t know, something they made up or whatever.

So that’s amazing.

A long history, yeah.

But the embarrassment part is kind of speculation, and I always hate to do speculation on this show, but it’s the best that I have to offer.

That’s what some of the people who have researched this believe, Eric Partridge and others.

Okay.

Well, all right then.

Well, thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

I’ll let my sister know where it came from.

Evelyn, thank you for your call.

We really appreciate you.

Thanks, Evelyn.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if there’s a word or phrase kicking around your family and you’re not sure if it’s your phrase or if other people use it, call us, 877-929-9673.