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

Example Sentences

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 was a grind that gave way to a routine as comfortable as an old shoe.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 25, 2025

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

From Seattle Times • Oct. 11, 2023

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

The recipes, the herbs, the wine, the preparation that goes into a good venison dish would make an old shoe a gourmet’s delight.

From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck