buttonhole stitch

1. 1.

   a reinforcing looped stitch for edges, as around a buttonhole

   Broadersewing stitch

Questions about buttonhole stitch

What does buttonhole stitch mean?

buttonhole stitch means "a reinforcing looped stitch for edges, as around a buttonhole".

Is buttonhole stitch a common word?

buttonhole stitch is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.