buttonhook

From button +‎ hook.

buttonhook (plural buttonhooks)

1. (now chiefly historical) A hook for pulling the buttons of gloves and shoes through the buttonholes. [from 18th c.]
   • 1920, DH Lawrence, Women in Love, Vintage 2008, p. 14:

     ‘I'm sorry we are so late,’ he was saying. ‘We couldn't find a button-hook, so it took us a long time to button our boots.’

   • 1976 September, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York, N.Y.: Avon Books, →ISBN, page 370:

     Hustlers used to sell shoes like that to the greenhorns fifty years ago with a buttonhook for a bonus.

2. (American football) A play in which the receiver runs straight downfield, then turns back toward the line of scrimmage. [from 20th c.]
   • 1988 January 15, Ted Cox, “The Sports Section”, in Chicago Reader‎^[1]:

     Yet the Bears never set up the deep patterns with a turn-in or a buttonhook […] .

3. (sewing) A hook used to pull thread through the holes of a button.

buttonhook (third-person singular simple present buttonhooks, present participle buttonhooking, simple past and past participle buttonhooked)

1. (American football) To perform the buttonhook play.