"bell button" meaning in English

See bell button in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: bell buttons [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} bell button (plural bell buttons)
  1. A small, round mechanical device which, when pressed, rings a bell to announce one's presence or call a servant, assistant, etc. Synonyms (device): buzzer, doorbell
    Sense id: en-bell_button-en-noun-0S24bvCm Disambiguation of 'device': 100 0
  2. A button in the form of a jingle bell, used as a fastener or decoration on a piece of clothing.
    Sense id: en-bell_button-en-noun-S8aaWvY5 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 11 89

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for bell button meaning in English (3.2kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bell buttons",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "bell button (plural bell buttons)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1921, B. M. Bower, chapter 2, in Sawtooth Ranch, London: Methuen",
          "text": "She hated the row of key-and-mail boxes on the wall, with the bell buttons above each apartment number. She hated the jangling of the hall telephone, the scurrying to answer, the prodding of whichever bell button would summon the tenant asked for by the caller.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1931, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 1, in The Glass Key, New York: Knopf",
          "text": "He pressed the bell-button set in the frame of a door marked 611. The door was opened immediately by a diminutive girl […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1951, Arthur Koestler, The Age of Longing, New York: Macmillan, Part 1, Chapter 9, pp. 156-157",
          "text": "“[…] bring me some brandy.” “That’s the room-service, sir,” said the valet, giving the waiter’s bell-button a vicious push as he went out.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1999, John le Carré, chapter 12, in Single & Single, New York: Scribner, page 221",
          "text": "K. Altremont, he read, shielding his eyes from the rain while he studied the illuminated bell buttons.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A small, round mechanical device which, when pressed, rings a bell to announce one's presence or call a servant, assistant, etc."
      ],
      "id": "en-bell_button-en-noun-0S24bvCm",
      "links": [
        [
          "mechanical",
          "mechanical"
        ],
        [
          "device",
          "device"
        ],
        [
          "bell",
          "bell"
        ],
        [
          "servant",
          "servant"
        ],
        [
          "assistant",
          "assistant"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "100 0",
          "sense": "device",
          "word": "buzzer"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "100 0",
          "sense": "device",
          "word": "doorbell"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "11 89",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "1775, James Adair, The History of the American Indians, London: Edward and Charles Dilly, Chapter , Argument 17, p. 171,\n[…] the young warriors now frequently fasten bell-buttons, or pieces of tinkling brass to their maccaseenes, and to the outside of their boots, instead of the old turky-cock-spurs which they formerly used."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1891, Charles King, “From ‘The Point’ to the Plains”, in Starlight Ranch and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier, Philadelphia: Lippincott, page 119",
          "text": "I haven’t the advantage of being a girl with a brother and a baker’s dozen of beaux in bell buttons and gray.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1920, Robert W. Chambers, chapter 6, in The Slayer of Souls, New York: Doran, page 6",
          "text": "“I’m quite ready now,” she said calmly, and drew the Chinese slippers over her bare feet and passed a silken loop over the silver bell buttons on her right shoulder.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A button in the form of a jingle bell, used as a fastener or decoration on a piece of clothing."
      ],
      "id": "en-bell_button-en-noun-S8aaWvY5",
      "links": [
        [
          "jingle bell",
          "jingle bell"
        ],
        [
          "fastener",
          "fastener"
        ],
        [
          "decoration",
          "decoration"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "bell button"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "bell buttons",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "bell button (plural bell buttons)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1921, B. M. Bower, chapter 2, in Sawtooth Ranch, London: Methuen",
          "text": "She hated the row of key-and-mail boxes on the wall, with the bell buttons above each apartment number. She hated the jangling of the hall telephone, the scurrying to answer, the prodding of whichever bell button would summon the tenant asked for by the caller.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1931, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 1, in The Glass Key, New York: Knopf",
          "text": "He pressed the bell-button set in the frame of a door marked 611. The door was opened immediately by a diminutive girl […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1951, Arthur Koestler, The Age of Longing, New York: Macmillan, Part 1, Chapter 9, pp. 156-157",
          "text": "“[…] bring me some brandy.” “That’s the room-service, sir,” said the valet, giving the waiter’s bell-button a vicious push as he went out.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1999, John le Carré, chapter 12, in Single & Single, New York: Scribner, page 221",
          "text": "K. Altremont, he read, shielding his eyes from the rain while he studied the illuminated bell buttons.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A small, round mechanical device which, when pressed, rings a bell to announce one's presence or call a servant, assistant, etc."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "mechanical",
          "mechanical"
        ],
        [
          "device",
          "device"
        ],
        [
          "bell",
          "bell"
        ],
        [
          "servant",
          "servant"
        ],
        [
          "assistant",
          "assistant"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "1775, James Adair, The History of the American Indians, London: Edward and Charles Dilly, Chapter , Argument 17, p. 171,\n[…] the young warriors now frequently fasten bell-buttons, or pieces of tinkling brass to their maccaseenes, and to the outside of their boots, instead of the old turky-cock-spurs which they formerly used."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1891, Charles King, “From ‘The Point’ to the Plains”, in Starlight Ranch and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier, Philadelphia: Lippincott, page 119",
          "text": "I haven’t the advantage of being a girl with a brother and a baker’s dozen of beaux in bell buttons and gray.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1920, Robert W. Chambers, chapter 6, in The Slayer of Souls, New York: Doran, page 6",
          "text": "“I’m quite ready now,” she said calmly, and drew the Chinese slippers over her bare feet and passed a silken loop over the silver bell buttons on her right shoulder.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A button in the form of a jingle bell, used as a fastener or decoration on a piece of clothing."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "jingle bell",
          "jingle bell"
        ],
        [
          "fastener",
          "fastener"
        ],
        [
          "decoration",
          "decoration"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "sense": "device",
      "word": "buzzer"
    },
    {
      "sense": "device",
      "word": "doorbell"
    }
  ],
  "word": "bell button"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.