An Americanism dating back to 1890–95
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The one name you will not find in that essay is Lance Armstrong, who was the straw boss of the team during Vaughters’s short time around the Tour.
From New York Times ● Aug. 24, 2012
Rather, he will be a Pentagon straw boss for missiles, working for the President through Killian and Defense Secretary Neil McElroy.
From Time Magazine Archive
Laughlin will be publisher and straw boss of Perspectives, but "to avoid any taint of cultism," each issue will have a different editor.
From Time Magazine Archive
As the state cops were leaving Tuskegee, Wallace's on-the-scene straw boss, State Finance Director Seymore Trammell, walked up to Mayor Rutherford.
From Time Magazine Archive
The straw boss had no faith in her, having watched her sweating hard to fill her sack as quickly as the children, but she was highly and suddenly vocal in her determination.
From "Jazz" by Toni Morrison
A hard-thinking strategist and Rayburn's straw-boss member of the Rules Committee, Boiling had started preparing for the battle months ahead of time.
From Time Magazine Archive
The U.S. got a topnotch builder last week to straw-boss its 41,000-mile interstate-highway program.
From Time Magazine Archive
Last week, while the tools and blueprints were still being got together, it sent Indiana's slightly dented political knight-errant, Paul V. McNutt, off to Manila as High Com missioner, to straw-boss the work.
From Time Magazine Archive
He was a new man, and therefore was expected to take signals from the oldest man on the job,—a sort of straw-boss.
From The Last Spike And Other Railroad Stories by Warman, Cy
A straw-boss, to be sure, but still a boss—and now he had lost his job.
From Bat Wing Bowles by Coolidge, Dane
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.
