Meaning
Doing something with very little money or on a minimal budget ('they ran the cafe on a shoestring for its first two years'); also attributively, as in 'shoestring budget'. American in origin but now general English wherever lean budgets are discussed. Informal and neutral; stresses ingenuity under constraint rather than poverty itself. Regional use: American English (clothing origin).
Origin
The shoestring itself is recorded as a word from the 1610s, and etymonline traces the figurative sense 'a small amount' to 1882 and the adjectival use 'operating at little cost' to 1890. Michael Quinion, in World Wide Words, traces the full phrase to the Wall Street Journal of 25 March 1897, which described a business founded 'based on a shoe string', and notes the slightly earlier American 'shoestring gamblers' of 1887, so called seemingly because they played only for small stakes. Robert Hendrickson's encyclopedia suggests the faro card table as a possible source and gave a first recording of 1904, since antedated. Quinion rejects as folklore the tale of prison debtors begging with a shoe lowered on its lace, concluding that the shoestring stood for resources that were both trivially cheap and thin, evoking getting by on less than is really required.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- live on a shoestring
- shoestring budget
- shoestring operation
Usage Examples
- The documentary was made on a shoestring, with borrowed cameras and volunteer editors.
- After the grant fell through, the lab operated on a shoestring for two semesters.
- Travelling on a shoestring taught her to sleep on night trains and eat from market stalls.