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shoe leather

British  

noun

  1. leather used to make shoes

  2. to avoid wearing out shoes, as by taking a bus rather than walking

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

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See Examples For:

“Despite the kind of complacency that some people might feel, we still got work to do. We’ve got to keep burning that shoe leather until we get everybody out of jails and prisons.”

From Seattle Times Apr. 20, 2024

Like many activists worldwide, Ms. Timchenko and her colleagues at Meduza are growing ever more adept at combining new technology and old-fashioned shoe leather to report on their country without censorship.

From New York Times Mar. 7, 2023

But the research wasn’t all libraries and journalistic shoe leather.

From Los Angeles Times Dec. 12, 2022

That data was the starting point for some good old-fashioned shoe leather reporting by The Associated Press, which traced down the companies responsible using public records.

From The Verge Aug. 3, 2022

There were no human signs, not a shred of clothing or shoe leather.

From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan

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