blue button

English
A blue button, Porpita porpita.

Alternative forms
  • blue-button

Noun

blue button (plural blue buttons)

  1. A colony of hydrozoan polyps of the species Porpita porpita
  2. (UK, finance, historical) An unauthorized clerk in the stock exchange.
    Coordinate term: red button
    • 1954, Margaret Shelly Rix, Stock Market Economics, page 17:
      Unauthorized clerks or Blue Buttons can make enquiries in the House and ask for prices but may not enter into any contract, while Red Buttons are clerks entitled to work in the Settling or checking Room.
    • 1987, The Director, volume 41, number 3, page 118:
      Then a blue button dashed to the box to pick up the call.
    • 1998, John Littlewood, The Stock Market: 50 Years of Capitalism at Work, page 333:
      When the market closed at 3.30 pm, the entire jobbing community exited the Stock Exchange, walking in procession back to their offices, followed by a file of blue buttons struggling to carry cumbersome dealing books.

References
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