shoestring
noun
Simple meaning
A lace used for fastening shoes.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
shoostringSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈʃustɹɪŋ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A lace used for fastening shoes
chiefly us
The string or lace used to secure a shoe to the foot; a shoelace.
Chiefly in on a shoestring: very little money; a tight budget.
An object that is long and thin, like a shoestring (sense 1).
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A lace used for fastening shoes
Used this way, shoestring is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- shoe string , rarer, so it draws attention
- shoelace , rarer, so it draws attention
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use shoestring
- “He managed it on a shoestring.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Chiefly
Other combinations
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A running catch made near the ground.
Any of several fungi of the genus Armillaria that form brown stringy rhizomorphs and cause destructive rot of the roots of some trees such as apples or maples.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: lace used for fastening shoes
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.