old shoe

American  

noun

Informal.

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

   Uncle Will is a lovable old shoe.

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old shoe Idioms  

1. see comfortable as an old shoe.

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Other Word Forms

• old-shoe
  adjective

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

old shoe

For others, Riviera — playing host to the major championship for the first time — was as comfortable as an old shoe.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 4, 2026

My knife also became something of a conversation piece—friends I cooked for wanted to try it, drawing it from its homemade cover, crafted from old shoe boxes.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 23, 2025

It’s about the Yoruba practice of making impromptu sculptures to help protect things — spiritual objects composed of straws from a broom, a chewed-up ear of corn, an old shoe.

From New York Times ● Mar. 17, 2022

“When you can point to your floor and say it came from an old shoe factory in Connecticut, for example, that’s a big attraction,” he says.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 1, 2019

Dutchy and I are standing together talking quietly when a man approaches with skin as tanned and scuffed as old shoe leather, trailed by a sour-looking woman.

From "Orphan Train" by Christina Baker Kline

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