shoe-leather
Part of speech: noun
adj
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: From shoe + leather.
Base: shoe
Inflected forms:
form: shoe-leathers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: shoe leather
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: shoeleather
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: shoe leather
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: shoeleather
pos: adj
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Leather that is used to make shoes.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: Outside of patent leathers and specialties, I know of no other types of shoe leathers which are commanding replacement costs today.
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.
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.
Shoe Leathers. Leather used in making shoes is of two kinds – bottom, or sole, leather and upper leather.
British authors have long suspected and documented that vegetable-tanned leather was responsible for many of their unexplained shoe leather-positive patients.
gloss: Leather from which shoes are made that is worn out through walking.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: 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.
Save on shoe leather [letter title] […] Pounding the sidewalks can seriously wear you out.
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.
gloss: The sweat of one's brow; effort; investigatory effort.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
countable
idiomatic
uncountable
examples: They expended a lot of shoe-leather in hunting down every lead.
Another way in which the laity expressed their yearning to break through the barrier separating them from the divine was to journey in pilgrimage to sacred places or shrines, so that they might offer their prayers in an especially powerful and effective setting. This was a devotion in which a layperson’s shoeleather was as good as that of any priest.
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.
gloss: Tough meat, especially cheap meat.
pos: noun
tags: countable
derogatory
figuratively
slang
uncountable
examples: The school certainly wasn't breaking the bank by feeding us — when it wasn't gruel it was shoe-leather.
gloss: Basic, old-fashioned or traditional; specifically (journalism) shoe-leather journalism or shoe-leather reporting: journalism involving walking from place to place observing things and speaking to people, rather than sitting indoors at a desk.
pos: adj
tags: idiomatic
not-comparable
examples: When we set out to produce the site full time, everything we did went on the site, but the reporting for the site hasn't changed. I don't think it ever will. It's basic shoe leather reporting, hunting down sources and documents and confirming authenticity.
The book, wrought from old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting of a type that's disappearing faster than nonfranchised lunch counters on Main Street, isn't chiefly a tale of drugs and crime, of dysfunction and despair, but a recession-era tragedy scaled for an "Our Town," Thornton Wilder stage and seemingly based on a script by William S. Burroughs.
Yes, old school, shoe-leather reporting uncovered the Watergate and Pentagon Papers scandals. But it was disturbingly ineffective during the McCarthy witch hunts and the US invasion of Iraq.
Since then, China's two major Twitter-like microblogs have posted an astounding 26 million messages on the tragedy, a potent amalgam of contempt for railway authorities, suspicion of official explanations and shoe-leather journalism by citizens and professionals alike.
Related words: patent leather
shoemaker
shoe polish
down at heel
pound a beat
Derived words: as ever trod shoe-leather
shoe leather journalism
shoe-leather journalism
shoe leather reporting
shoe-leather reporting
Translations: