in someone's shoes

1. Also, in someone else's shoes;. Acting for another person or experiencing something as another person might; in another's position or situation. For example, If you were in my shoes, would you ask the new secretary for a date? or In your shoes I wouldn't accept the offer, or Can you go to the theater in my place? or He was speaking in her stead. The idioms alluding to shoes, with their image of stepping into someone's shoes, date from about 1700 and are generally used in a conditional clause beginning with if. Stead, dating from the 1300s, and place, from the 1500s, are used more loosely. Also see fill someone's shoes; put someone in his or her place; take someone's place.

Example Sentences

“I wish these games would use different wording, like, ‘raising awareness,’ ” instead of empathy games or games that allow you to walk in someone’s shoes, said Kishonna Gray, associate professor in Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky and a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

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Most people think it is the idea of walking in someone’s shoes, and so if you play as an avatar of some marginalized group, you are suddenly going to be empathetic to your avatar and thus that group.

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But empathy is not so much being in someone’s shoes as having the ability to project yourself onto someone else, Farber said.

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"We want people to watch this and feel what it was like to walk in someone's shoes."

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"Until you walk a mile in someone’s shoes nobody should judge or make negative comments about anyone and nobody should have to live under constant attack and fear for their safety. In my heart of hearts I know Meg has not changed and is the still the sweet person I worked with for those 5 years. I wish her my very best and thank her for the many great memories I am fortunate and blessed to have had," he concluded.

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