buttoned-down

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but·ton-down

(bŭt′n-doun′)

adj.

1. Having buttons extending down the front from the collar to the waist: a button-down shirt.

2. Fastened down by buttons: a button-down collar.

3. also but·toned-down (bŭt′nd-) Conservative, conventional, or unimaginative: "a colorful character in the buttoned-down, dull-gray world of business" (Newsweek).

A button-down shirt.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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Adj.

buttoned-down - unimaginatively conventional; "a colorful character in the buttoned-down, dull-grey world of business"- Newsweek

button-down, conservative

conventional - unimaginative and conformist; "conventional bourgeois lives"; "conventional attitudes"

button-down

also buttoned-down
adjective

Conforming to established practice or standards:

conformist, conventional, establishmentarian, orthodox, straight, traditional.

Slang: square.

References in periodicals archive ?

Speaking to the Radio Times, cowriter and co-star Connie Booth said: "Fawlty Towers succeeds, I think, because it allows infantile rage and aggression a field day in a buttoned-down, well-mannered English society."

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Shearsmith's blank, buttoned-down performance as Malcolm Webster is a study in banal, cowardly evil.

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The 70-year-old former Beatle wore a white buttoned-down shirt, narrow-lapel suit and knitted tie at the award ceremony.

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Back in the early '90s when comedy was being referred to as 'the new rock and roll' this pair of geography teacher-a-likes were the buttoned-down, tweed-jacketed square pegs to Baddiel and Newman's slightly more hip and cool counterparts.

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The fevered, buttoned-down intensity of Kinnear's playing is an exciting foretaste of his Hamlet for director Nicholas Hytner in the fall.

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As someone who has been in a monogamous relationship for three years, allow me to clear up a popular misconception about those of us who appear more buttoned-down: I have not had my inner sexual outlaw brainwashed out of me by an increasingly conservative gay mainstream.

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In 1965, when The Offering was shot, China was a closed country and Toronto a buttoned-down, Anglo Saxon town.

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With its potential for serious spills on rough terrain, mountain biking would seem more suited to twentysomething thrill-seekers than buttoned-down executives twice or three times their age.

The Slickrock trail: so much for club sports. In Moab, Utah's mountain-biking mecca, CEOs come to 'shred.'

But rather than trafficking in overt anatomical distortions or historical mannerism, Cerletty prefers a steadier, more buttoned-down, domestic center.