[General] button faced

Dear teachers,

Would you be kind enough to tell me whether I am right with my interpretation of the expression in bold im the following sentences?

She advanced, light, tall, very upright, to be greeted at once by button-faced Miss Pym, whose hands were always bright red, as if they had been stood in cold water with the flowers.

button faced Miss Pym = Miss Pym with a face of an oyster

These "leftovers" became the designs for hats and the tops of dresses for these button faced girls that she designed for the place-cards.

button faced girls = plain faced girls

In this, a small steel button faced with cork rested on the surface of a rotating glass disc treated with resin.

button faced = ?

Thanks for your efforts.

Regards,

V.

vil said:

Dear teachers,

Would you be kind enough to tell me whether I am right with my interpretation of the expression in bold im the following sentences?

She advanced, light, tall, very upright, to be greeted at once by button-faced Miss Pym, whose hands were always bright red, as if they had been stood in cold water with the flowers.

button faced Miss Pym = Miss Pym with a face of an oyster

These "leftovers" became the designs for hats and the tops of dresses for these button faced girls that she designed for the place-cards.

button faced girls = plain faced girls

In this, a small steel button faced with cork rested on the surface of a rotating glass disc treated with resin.

button faced = ?

Thanks for your efforts.

Regards,

V.

Click to expand...

Thank you for these examples. It raises a very interesting issue.

I am not so sure what button-faced means in the first examples but it is clearly being used as an adjective. It might mean someone whose face tends to be helded scrunched up like a button. Perhaps it is a person who is normally quite stern -- or, as you say, plain.

The last example is the interesting one. Here button is the noun and stands by itself. Can you see that? Then it is modified by the phrase "faced with cork," that is, it has cork on its outside "face."

It can sometimes be very hard to tell just how two words go together -- as part of a two-word phrase, a noun modified by the second word, a noun and a verb (yes, "faced" could be a verb,) etc. I know that I have difficulty with that when I read in other languages; it is certainly not unique to English.

Thank you for the examples!