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
In his sharply tailored suits, pointed-toe shoes, dark glasses and pinkie ring, Cammillieri was an unlikely looking straw boss for an office building construction gang.
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
In 1932, he quit his job as straw boss with a construction firm and raised a $125 down payment on a Model A pickup truck.
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
The U.S. got a topnotch builder last week to straw-boss its 41,000-mile interstate-highway program.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
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 looked very hard at his straw-boss as he spoke, and Hardy Atkins answered him dutifully; but when the boss was gone he turned and winked at his partners.
From Bat Wing Bowles by Coolidge, Dane
He had bluffed the straw-boss, sure enough; but still the thing wasn’t entirely satisfactory.
From The Snow-Burner by Oyen, Henry
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.
