ボタン

Portuguese botão is the older source for clothing ボタン in Japanese dictionaries. Priberam defines botão first as the piece that goes through the holes of clothing, and also as a door knob, electric bell, bud, and related small round object. Shogakukan's Nihon Kokugo Daijiten cites a 1651 example in the haikai source 御傘, written with ほたん and linked to clothing and tabi fasteners. This is an early modern borrowing from Portuguese contact, before many Meiji English loans entered daily Japanese. The first meaning was a garment fastener, written later as 釦 or 鈕, both ateji-style technical characters. In the modern period, machines, elevators, telephones, and radios made 押しボタン common. That device sense also matches English button, so modern Japanese ボタン has two layers: an older Portuguese clothing word and a later English-compatible control word. Today ボタン covers shirt buttons, screen buttons, and machine controls. Portuguese botão has a wider native range, including flower bud and knob, while English button covers both clothing and controls but is not the oldest source for Japanese clothing ボタン. The clothing sense also remains common in シャツのボタン and コートのボタン. A normal example is エレベーターのボタンを押す.