shoestring
Americannoun
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another word for shoelace
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informal
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a very small or petty amount of money (esp in the phrase on a shoestring )
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( as modifier )
a shoestring budget
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Etymology
Origin of shoestring
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Operation Shoestring has helped struggling families in Jackson, Mississippi, for decades.
From Seattle Times • Oct. 20, 2022
“It had been reallocated in ways we’re reading about now,” Robert Langford, executive director of Operation Shoestring, which has been providing aid to families in need for more than a half-century, said in an interview.
From Washington Post • Sep. 27, 2022
After fires, illness and neighbor squabbles, the book ends with the youngest Slater boy, Shoestring, wanting “to git book-larnin’.”
From New York Times • Apr. 7, 2021
Banks Stewart went on to create two successful BBC series - Shoestring, starring Trevor Eve as a private eye, and Bergerac, the popular police drama set on Jersey which ran for 10 years.
From BBC • Feb. 2, 2016
She had used one the previous summer to measure the movement of the Shoestring Glacier; she was sure it would help now.
From "Mountain of Fire" by Rebecca E. F. Barone
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
