File under “I’ll Order One Shirt, Hold the Buttons”: There is no hole in buttonhole (to begin with, anyway).
Buttonhole has nothing in common with buttonhold, the word we folk-etymologized to create buttonhole. The original buttonhold was a loop of string put round the button so to keep one’s shirt on. The progression from buttonhold to buttonhole is hardly a leap of physical or semantic logic, so why do I say that the words have nothing in common? Well, what’s in the middle of each? Nothing. And that’s what they have in common. Until they fasten the button, that is.