old shoe

noun

Informal.

1. a person or thing that is comfortably familiar and unpretentious.

   Uncle Will is a lovable old shoe.

Other Word Forms

• old-shoe adjective

Idioms and Phrases

see comfortable as an old shoe.

Example Sentences

“These new projects are welcome, but workers can’t be discarded like an old shoe.”

From Seattle Times

“It was like putting on an old shoe, a shoe so old the laces were gone,” Burrows jokes.

From Seattle Times

You're risking agonizing disease and an early death for the payoff of smelling like an old shoe.

From Salon

Of Carver, Colescott observed in 1990, “Subversion of this icon, a quasi-religious image that everyone bows to and believes in — but nobody thinks about — seemed like a good idea, a new life for an old shoe.”

From New York Times

For Neill, playing Grant was like putting on an old shoe: “It’s comfortable and I know exactly what to do with the shoe.”

From Washington Post