buttoned-down

Examples

• All

• Me with my buttoned-down corporate lover, living uptown somewhere.

  Fiction book (2000)

• Everyone dressed buttoned-down for the company's annual gala to match the elegant atmosphere.

• And then this just buttoned down with a fuzzy shirt.

• His rumpled style did not match the firm's buttoned-down corporate image.

  Academic text (1994)

• It probably would have been unbuttoned to the waist, again, not quite fully buttoned down as is more common of our modern dress shirts.

• In a world where many employees rarely visit an office, what can a relic from the buttoned-down, Eisenhower-era corporate establishment teach us about how to work?

  Academic text (2009)

• Consequently, "Japanese schools teach a buttoned-down sense of time and space not unlike what one finds in the military" (Rohlen 1983: 316).

  Academic text (1998)

• He wanted a CIA that was as shipshape, buttoned-down, and as aware of legal niceties as the FBI had become during his years there.

  Academic text (2009)

• "Can you see a buttoned-down, blow-dried, politically correct American politician ever signing such an order?" Both men stood with their elbows on the railing, looking at the cargo ships.

  Fiction book (2000)

• His formal attire made him look very buttoned-down at the corporate meeting.

Synonyms

C

conservative

vsbuttoned-down

∞ 4.6

Does not want big changes and likes traditional values

is narrower used for conventional dress and behavior rather than broad politics

B

button-down

vsbuttoned-down

• Informal

4 6.7

Very formal in dress or behaviour and not open to new ideas

is the past-participle form focusing on people or environments

B

buttoned-up

vsbuttoned-down

• Formal

4 7.4

Very formal and conservative in dress and manner at work or events

is more about unimaginative conventional style than mere formality

Antonyms

U

unconventional

76 6.2

Different from what most people do or accept

I

imaginative

55 3.7

Having many new and different ideas

How Conventional

stuffy

• Informal

31 5.6

buttoned-down

• Informal

15 7.1

conventional

287 2.8

informal

100 3.1

Surface Forms

Morphology

Etymology