shoe
Americannoun
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shoes,
plural
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shoon
plural (especially British Dialect)
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an external covering for the human foot, usually of leather and consisting of a more or less stiff or heavy sole and a lighter upper part ending a short distance above, at, or below the ankle.
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an object or part resembling a shoe in form, position, or use.
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a horseshoe or a similar plate for the hoof of some other animal.
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a ferrule or the like, as of iron, for protecting the end of a staff, pole, etc.
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the outer casing of a pneumatic automobile tire.
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a drag or skid for a wheel of a vehicle.
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a part having a larger area than the end of an object on which it fits, serving to disperse or apply its weight or thrust.
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the sliding contact by which an electric car or locomotive takes its current from the third rail.
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Civil Engineering.
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a member supporting one end of a truss or girder in a bridge.
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a hard and sharp foot of a pile or caisson for piercing underlying soil.
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a small molding, as a quarter round, closing the angle between a baseboard and a floor.
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the outwardly curved portion at the base of a downspout.
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a piece of iron or stone, sunk into the ground, against which the leaves of a gateway are shut.
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a device on a camera that permits an accessory, as a flashgun, to be attached.
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a band of iron on the bottom of the runner of a sleigh.
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Cards. dealing box.
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Furniture.
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a cuplike metal piece for protecting the bottom of a leg.
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a fillet beneath an ornamental foot, as a pad or scroll foot.
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Printing. a box into which unusable type is thrown.
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a chute conveying grain to be ground into flour.
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Carpentry. soleplate.
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Nautical. a thickness of planking covering the bottom of the keel of a wooden vessel to protect it against rubbing.
verb (used with object)
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shoes,
present (3rd person singular)
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shod,
past participle, past
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shoed,
past participle, past
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shodden,
past participle (Archaic)
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shoeing
present participle
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to provide or fit with a shoe or shoes.
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to protect or arm at the point, edge, or face with a ferrule, metal plate, or the like.
idioms
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fill someone's shoes, to take the place and assume the obligations of another person.
She felt that no stepmother could ever hope to fill her late mother's shoes.
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the shoe is on the other foot, the circumstances are reversed; a change of places has occurred.
Now that we are rich and they are poor the shoe is on the other foot.
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where the shoe pinches, the true cause of the trouble or worry.
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drop the other shoe, to complete an action or enterprise already begun.
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in someone's shoes, in a position or situation similar to that of another.
I wouldn't like to be in his shoes.
noun
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one of a matching pair of coverings shaped to fit the foot, esp one ending below the ankle, having an upper of leather, plastic, etc, on a sole and heel of heavier leather, rubber, or synthetic material
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( as modifier )
shoe cleaner
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anything resembling a shoe in shape, function, position, etc, such as a horseshoe
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a band of metal or wood on the bottom of the runner of a sledge
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(in baccarat, etc) a boxlike device for holding several packs of cards and allowing the cards to be dispensed singly
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a base for the supports of a superstructure of a bridge, roof, etc
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a metal collector attached to an electric train that slides along the third rail and picks up power for the motor
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engineering a lining to protect from and withstand wear See brake shoe pile shoe
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informal to be in another person's situation
verb
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to furnish with shoes
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to fit (a horse) with horseshoes
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to furnish with a hard cover, such as a metal plate, for protection against friction or bruising
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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shoesimple
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shoessimple
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have shodperfect
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have shoddenperfect
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have shoedperfect
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has shodperfect
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has shoddenperfect
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has shoedperfect
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am shoeingprogressive
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are shoeingprogressive
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is shoeingprogressive
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have been shoeingperfect progressive
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has been shoeingperfect progressive
Past
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shodsimple
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shoedsimple
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had shodperfect
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had shoddenperfect
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had shoedperfect
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was shoeingprogressive
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were shoeingprogressive
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had been shoeingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of shoe
First recorded before 900; (noun) Middle English scho(o), Old English sceō(h), cognate with German Schuh, Old Norse skōr, Gothic skōhs; (verb) Middle English schon, Old English scōg(e)an, cognate with Middle Low German schoi(g)en, Old Norse skūa
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The other shoe dropped last night, when the Wall Street Journal reported she has not passed the bar in the U.S., a revelation Zacharia seemingly confirmed on Thursday.
From Slate ● Oct. 15, 2026
At the hospital, an insect fell from the girl’s shoe, and a staffer saw a cockroach crawling on her, the district attorney’s office said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 14, 2026
Beyond that, Christensen’s advises training in more than one kind of shoe, varying amount of cushioning and stack height.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026
Track stars have filed civil lawsuits against shoe manufacturers, including Nike and Puma, alleging that high-stack shoes with carbon plates caused career-derailing injuries.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026
“Children, there you are! As you see, I broke the heel off my shoe running over the rocky path and had to hop the rest of the way home.”
From "The Unseen Guest" by Maryrose Wood
“If I’m on Nordstrom’s website and I click to see the model show me what the shoes are going to look like,” said Barrett, “that’s a profit motive.”
From Slate ● Oct. 17, 2026
Dubbed “the barefoot revolutionary” for his refusal to wear shoes, Hilton was satirized on the BBC political sitcom “The Thick of It” as Stewart Pearson, the Tories’ “eco-friendly, media-savvy, blue-sky-thinking” communications director.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2026
We meet Mona in media res, nervously tapping her shoes on the carpeted lobby floor and fretting over her audition.
From Salon ● Oct. 12, 2026
Meanwhile, shoes fitted with motion sensors could provide feedback as patients practice walking at home or around their neighborhoods.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2026
My legs and feet were still painfully swollen from the long count the day before, my shoes were held together with bits of string.
From "The Hiding Place" by Corrie ten Boom
A typical stanza: Tell me by what art thou bindest On thy feet those ancient shoon: Tell me, Grinder, if thou grindest Always, always out of tune.
From Time Magazine Archive
Then she's ta'en him to her chamber, And down in her arms lay he: The boy coost aff his hose and shoon, And ran to fair Dundee.
From English and Scottish Ballads, Volume II (of 8) by Various
Under the silvery gray coat I could see her little doe-skin shoon peeping out.
From Cardigan by Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
He was a thorn in the flesh to everybody he came across; he was like grit in the porridge, like a fly in the eye, like a stone in the shoon.
From The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India by W.H.D. Rouse
There, I felt it with my toes again; see the benefit of wearing sandals, and not shoon.
From The Cloister and the Hearth A Tale of the Middle Ages by Charles Reade
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Trump is so smitten with his Florsheim dress shoes that he shod his whole Cabinet in the same footwear.
From Slate ● Mar. 14, 2026
Dsquared2 also presented for autumn-winter 2026-27 an army of holidaymakers shod in provocative footwear.
From Barron's ● Jan. 16, 2026
He crosses one flamboyantly shod foot over another on his desk with churlish satisfaction and takes a deep draw on his cigar.
From Salon ● Jun. 22, 2025
Brown and Green kept me moving — if not dancing, exactly — shod in my first pair of proper gardening boots, which were, serendipitously, brown and green.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 25, 2023
Her feet were shod in golden shoes with pointy tips.
From "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" by Avi
Only 18 people shoed up for a debate we hosted, and we had received only seven letters.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 23, 2020
“You got up in the morning, you tended to your horses, you cleaned the hooves out, shoed them and fed them,” Elliott said.
From Washington Times ● Jul. 10, 2016
She hates heels, feels like a shoed horse in them.
From Salon ● Nov. 23, 2012
John rubbed all eight horses, galloped them, even shoed them.
From Time Magazine Archive
Peter recognized Vola’s footsteps—the hard wooden stamp followed by the softer shoed footfall—and dropped the logs back into the wood bin.
From "Pax" by Sara Pennypacker
On either side, in purple distance, sprang sky-piercing obelisks and vapor-mantled glaciers, spangled with bright snow, and shodden with eternal forest.
From Erema — My Father's Sin by R. D. (Richard Doddridge) Blackmore
But oh! the slips of those who are shodden with vanity!
From Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. Edited by his Daughter by Mary Elizabeth Dewey
"Black fellow," I said to myself; but no, those were shodden feet that swept along so wearily.
From Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn by Henry Kingsley
Therefore, without more hesitation, I plunged into the middle way, holding a long ash-staff before me, shodden at the end with iron.
From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 5 by Hamilton Wright Mabie
After leaving school at 16 with no qualifications, Paul started working for his father but saw little future in shoeing horses and earning "the equivalent of 75p per horse and the chance to be kicked".
From BBC ● Dec. 6, 2025
In a memoir, Mr. Hébras recalled the sounds of his town as it had been in his youth — “the church bells and the anvil of the blacksmith shoeing cows and hobnailing our clogs.”
From Washington Post ● Feb. 28, 2023
He began shoeing horses for television and film westerns, and gradually took nonspeaking roles on horseback.
From New York Times ● Aug. 1, 2020
Cherry’s curiosity about people’s lives produced finely observed pictures of immigrants, street vendors, bocce players, farriers shoeing Central Park carriage horses, construction workers, fruit auctioneers and children watching in amazement as an airplane flew overhead.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 15, 2019
Purses were often smaller than the cost of shoeing a horse—about $1.40.
From "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" by Laura Hillenbrand
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