shoestring
Americannoun
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another word for shoelace
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informal
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a very small or petty amount of money (esp in the phrase on a shoestring )
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( as modifier )
a shoestring budget
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Etymology
Origin of shoestring
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.
Operation Shoestring has helped struggling families in Jackson, Mississippi, for decades.
From Seattle Times • Oct. 20, 2022
In 2017, a Mississippi nonprofit called Operation Shoestring received a federal grant worth more than $200,000.
From Washington Post • Sep. 27, 2022
After fires, illness and neighbor squabbles, the book ends with the youngest Slater boy, Shoestring, wanting “to git book-larnin’.”
From New York Times • Apr. 7, 2021
But prior to my own Eurorailing adventure, I’d lent my Lonely Planet: Europe on a Shoestring to five friends who had already been on such a trip, asking them to add notes, suggestions, annotations.
From The Guardian • Mar. 24, 2018
There was plenty of grumbling in the staff conferences at Guadalcanal about Operation Cartwheel being turned into Operation Shoestring Number Two.
From "Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two" by Joseph Bruchac
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.
