shoehorn
Americannoun
verb (used with object)
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of shoehorn
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:
It is hard to shoehorn this spectacle of mass-integration, this enforced loss of crowns and kingdoms, into the idea of partition.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026
"These subjects are not the easiest to shoehorn into a three-and-a-half minute song," says Lorde.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2025
“To shoehorn anything into tiny Disneyland is really hard,” Irvine says, adding, “a lot of people in merchandising would have preferred it was bigger.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 17, 2025
Scott, as usual, also needs to shoehorn meaning that he doesn't know how to produce and erase history that he doesn't know how to replace.
From Salon ● Dec. 7, 2024
Guides to English grammar were written as pedagogical steppingstones to mastery of Latin grammar, and they tried to shoehorn English constructions into the categories designed for Latin.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
Anthropic's advertisement broadcast during last week's Super Bowl showed a man asking advice from a conversational AI, which then shoehorns advertising copy for a dating site into its otherwise relevant response.
From Barron's ● Feb. 15, 2026
The show, unfortunately, shoehorns in too many songs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2022
These contrasting views are clearly designed to make a point, but doing so shoehorns him into an argumentative posture that doesn’t always fit his comedy.
From New York Times ● Oct. 13, 2022
It is a shame the film shoehorns so much of the book into two hours.
From Salon ● Jul. 15, 2022
Luckily, I had recently purchased two of your quality shoehorns and was able to finish the exam without missing a beat.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 24, 2022
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
