Definition of "buttonholing" []

• Present participle of buttonhole. (verb)
• The act of detaining someone in conversation against his or her will. (noun)

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• "CHAIN AND SURFACE STITCHES -- the latter a kind of buttonholing, only occasionally worked _in_to the stuff."
• "I spent the rest of the day, indeed much of the rest of the conference, buttonholing leading nuclear figures of this and other nations with that same forbidden question: what happens if deterrence fails and you have to decide whether to kill millions of innocent civilians because you threatened to?"
• "Crisscrossing the state in a series of rented cars, the 56-year-old Mr. Singleton has spent the better part of five months visiting obscure county GOP chairmen, befriending tea-party activists, buttonholing lawmakers in the lobby of the state Capitol, and amassing a database of potential Palin supporters."