shoe-leather
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈʃuːˌlɛðə/
ipa: /ˈʃuːˌlɛðɚ/
Forms: form: shoe-leathers
form: shoe leather
Etymology: From shoe + leather.
Senses: examples: text: Outside of patent leathers and specialties, I know of no other types of shoe leathers which are commanding replacement costs today.
ref: 1922, Boot and Shoe Recorder: The Magazine of Fashion Footwear, volume 81, Philadelphia, Pa.: King Publications (a subsidiary of Chilton Company), →OCLC, page 86:
text: Naturally, this aristocrat of shoe leathers costs more than ordinary leather – and, for the past two years, it has been all but unobtainable in this country.
ref: 1942 October 12, “Is there a Bagpipe Player in the Audience? [Regal Shoes advertisement]”, in LIFE, volume 13, number 15, Chicago, Ill.: Time Inc., →OCLC, page 136:
text: Notable in feminine footgear of the first two decades was the increasing number of different shoe leathers consisting of box calf, white calf, colored kids, buck and antelope.
ref: 1948, R. Turner Wilcox, “Twentieth-century Footwear”, in The Mode in Footwear, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, OCLC 1356620; republished as The Mode in Footwear: A Historical Survey with 53 Plates, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications, 2008, ISBN 978-0-486-46761-0, page 154
text: Shoe Leathers. Leather used in making shoes is of two kinds – bottom, or sole, leather and upper leather.
ref: 1952, F. P. Veitch, R. W. Frey, H. P. Holman, Leather Shoes: Selection and Care (U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin; 1523), rev. edition, Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Agriculture, →OCLC, page 1:
text: British authors have long suspected and documented that vegetable-tanned leather was responsible for many of their unexplained shoe leather-positive patients.
ref: 2008, Robert L. Reitschel, Joseph F. Fowler, Alexander A. Fisher, Fisher's Contact Dermatitis, 6th edition, Hamilton, Ont.: B. C. Decker, →ISBN, page 359:
glosses: Leather that is used to make shoes.
examples: text: In old times, if a Coniston peasant had any business at Ulverstone, he walked to Ulverstone; spent nothing but shoe-leather on the road, drank at the streams, and if he spent a couple of batz when he got to Ulverstone, "it was the end of the world." But now, he would never think of doing such a thing! He first walks three miles in a contrary direction, to a railroad station, and then travels by railroad twenty-four miles to Ulverstone, paying two shillings fare.
ref: 1874 June 6, John Ruskin, “Letter XLIV”, in Fors Clavigera. Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain, volume IV, Orpington, Kent: George Allen, →OCLC, pages 166–167:
text: Save on shoe leather [letter title] […] Pounding the sidewalks can seriously wear you out.
ref: 2011 August 13, Peter Atkinson, “Save on shoe leather [letter]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Travel), archived from the original on 17 Sep 2011, page T13:
text: Many sleuths, both professional and amateur, have devoted years to unravelling the circumstances of the heist, but one man who has worn out more shoe leather than most in pursuit of this mystery is Stephen Kurkjian, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter now retired after 40 years at The Boston Globe.
ref: 2015 March 28, Jake Kerridge, “Solved! The greatest art theft in history”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review), archived from the original on 30 Aug 2015, page R12:
glosses: Leather from which shoes are made that is worn out through walking.
examples: text: They expended a lot of shoe-leather in hunting down every lead.
text: America desperately needed a Jimmy Carter in 1976 […] And so for him to come out of almost from nowhere to earn the nomination by sheer shoe leather in Iowa and New Hampshire, and to be the person outside of the establishment and to say, I’m not from Washington, I will never lie to you, I’m a born again Christian – what I say is that, he really did bring a close to the Watergate period.
ref: 2024, Barbara Perry (director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center), quoted in: Harry Bruinius, For Jimmy Carter, a life of service, defined by faith, in: The Christian Science Monitor, December 29 2024
glosses: The sweat of one's brow; effort; investigatory effort.
examples: text: The school certainly wasn't breaking the bank by feeding us — when it wasn't gruel it was shoe-leather.
glosses: Tough meat, especially cheap meat.
Derived terms: as ever trod shoe-leather
Related terms: patent leather
shoemaker
shoe polish
down at heel
pound a beat