1. buttonholing - Noun
2. buttonholing - Verb
buttonholing
present participle of buttonhole
buttonholing (countable and uncountable, plural buttonholings)
The act of detaining someone in conversation against his or her will.
Nearly 40 years ago, on the ferry from Liverpool to Dublin, I hurled one of Burgess's Enderby novels into the Irish Sea, unable to bear another word. I have thought of him ever since as a pretentious windbag, a buttonholing bore whose writing had energy but no vitality. Anthony Burgess