expressões com a palavra button

I have a bunch of expressions with the word button, so I got to be careful not to get carried away. I want to provide you with the most interesting ones and spare you from unnecessary information. So, without further ado, let's try to remember some of the ways the word button alone is used in different ways. For example, you're telling a joke and when you finally get to the button, you realize you told the whole joke wrong. If you're confused with what I just said, that's because you've probably never heard of the word button being used as a synonymous for "the punch line of a joke" or the "termination of a recitation".

The word button also reminds me of the term "belly button", which is basically what we all have in the belly where the umbilical cord was attached. If you call an issue a hot button, you're talking about an issue that's become very important to people and which they feel very strongly about. If you've heard of the expression "a hot potato", which means basically the same thing, it won't be hard for you to remember the expression "a hot button". If we try to remember some of the hot buttons we have these days in Brazil, we could think of economics issues, politics issues, etc.

Now let's finally know some expressions that are a little bit less intuitive to understand in the case you come across them for the first time. For example, if you push the right buttons, what does that mean in a subjective way? Imagine you are new at a company and then one of your coworkers comes to you to give you a piece of advice. While teaching you the ropes, he tells you that you need to push the right buttons if you want to become successful. But what does that mean? If you push the right buttons, you do what is necessary to get the result that you want.

Another expression that's actually very similar to the previous one is "push someone's buttons". Imagine you have a very jealous girlfriend. You know that's her weak point, so you know exactly what would draw a strong reaction from her. Things like exchanging messages with a female friend on the telephone, hanging out with girls she doesn't know, complimenting a girl are the kind of attitudes that would drive her crazy. If you did any of those things, it would be like pushing her buttons. According to The Free Dictionary, "This metaphoric expression transfers activating some mechanism by pushing buttons to human emotions". I hope this helps. Talk to you next time!