different between buttony vs muttony

English

Etymology

button +? -y

Adjective

buttony (comparative more buttony, superlative most buttony)

1. Having a large number of buttons.
   • 1848, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair, Chapter 60,^[4]

     That carriage came round to Gillespie Street every day; that buttony boy sprang up and down from the box with Emmy’s and Jos’s visiting-cards […]

   • 1869, W. S. Gilbert, “Bob Polter” in Bab Ballads, p. 179,^[5]

     “And will my whiskers curl so tight?

     My cheeks grow smug and muttony?

     My face become so red and white?

     My coat so blue and buttony?

   • 1873, Louisa May Alcott, Work: A Story of Experience, Boston: Roberts Brothers, Chapter 16, p. 372,^[6]

     […] the inconsistent woman fell upon his buttony breast weeping copiously.

   • 1997, Kate Wheeler, “Improving My Average” in Not Where I Started From, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, p. 5,^[7]

     That night I lay on a buttony mildewed company mattress between my favorite sheets.

2. Resembling a button or buttons.
   • 1778, William Pryce, Mineralogia Cornubiensis: A Treatise of Minerals, Mines, and Mining, London: for the author, Chapter 3, p. 62,^[8]

     The Stalactical, is generally of a brassy colour; and so is the blistered buttony Ore, which is protuberant in a semi-circular form […]

   • 1924, Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not ..., Part 1, Chapter 6,^[9]

     Tietjens paused and aimed with his hazel stick an immense blow at a tall spike of yellow mullein with its undecided, furry, glaucous leaves and its undecided, buttony, unripe lemon-coloured flowers.

   • 1938, Graham Greene, Brighton Rock, London: Heinemann, 1962, Part 2, Chapter 2, p. 83,^[10]

     […] something a little doggish peeped out of the black buttony eyes, a hint of the seraglio.

   • 1993, John Updike, “The Black Room” in Prize Stories 1995: The O. Henry Awards, New York: Doubleday, 1995, p. 279,^[11]

     […] the street had been widened at the expense of a row of sycamores whose blotched bark and buttony seed pods had seemed oddly toylike to him, as if God were an invisible playmate.

   1. (of berries) Not fully grown and matured; overly small and insufficiently juicy.
      • 1912, P. M. Kiely, Southern Fruits and Vegetables for Northern Markets, St. Louis, Missouri, p. 157,^[12]

        But the little dinky, buttony or warty berries must not be packed at all.

      • 1917, F. W. Dixon, Small Fruit Plants Annual Catalog, Holton, Kansas, p. 8,^[13]

        Some seasons a large number of berries are buttony.

   2. (of hops) Full-berried.

Synonyms

• (resembling a button): buttonlike

Noun

buttony (uncountable)

1. The manufacture of buttons.
   • 1906, Lady Dorothy Nevill, The Reminiscences of Lady Dorothy Nevill, edited by Ralph Nevill, London: Edward Arnold, Chapter 3, p. 33,^[14]

     Whenever we inquired of the village girls what their occupation was, almost invariably the quaint answer ‘We do buttony’ was given.

   • 1958, Agnes Allen, The Story of Clothes, New York: Roy Publishers, Chapter 12, p. 113,^[15]

     From this time onwards ‘buttony’, or making buttons, gradually became an important industry at which many people earned their livings.

   • 2007, Tracy Chevalier, Burning Bright, New York: Dutton, Part 4, Chapter 4, p. 126,^[16]

     […] she busied herself in the front room, rustling about in Anne Kellaway’s box of buttony materials filled with rings of various sizes, chips of sheep horn for the Singletons, a ball of flax for shaping round buttons, bits of linen for covering them, both sharp and blunt needles, and several different colors and thicknesses of thread.
2. (Scotland, games) A children’s game played with buttons.
   • 1896, J. M. Barrie, Sentimental Tommy, London: Cassell, Chapter 15, p. 172,^[17]

     She collected all her treasures, the bottle with the brass top that she had got from Shovel’s old girl, […] the pretty buttons Tommy had won for her at the game of buttony, the witchy marble, […] these and some other precious trifles she made a little bundle of and set off for Double Dykes with them, intending to leave them at the door.

Synonyms

• (manufacture of buttons): buttonmaking

References

English

Etymology

mutton +? -y

Adjective

muttony (comparative more muttony, superlative most muttony)

1. Like mutton; having a flavour of mutton.
   • 1891, Outing: Sport, Adventure, Travel, Fiction (volume 17, page 137)

     I confess to having felt a prejudice against sleeping in a bag, more especially a sheepskin bag, which would probably have a muttony odor; but it was pronounced to be the warmest and least cumbersome form of bedding we could have […]