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In earlier times, wandering peddlers offered townspeople a variety of items and trinkets, such as fabrics, embroidery materials, and even patent medicines. Another popular offering from these traveling salespeople was shoelaces. The fact that such vendors neither earned much money nor charged very much for their wares led to the connection of their literal shoestrings with a metaphorical application of "shoestring" to a very small amount of money. It's still not uncommon to hear of a business being operated on a shoestring (even if these days it's less likely that actual shoelaces are involved), but it's also possible to speak of "traveling on a shoestring" and even "gardening on a shoestring."
Synonyms
Examples of shoestring in a Sentence
Brad Japhe, Travel + Leisure, 22 May 2024
Expect to see vegetarian and vegan options for those sausages, too, and sides such as shoestring fries, macaroni salad and potato salad, and frozen sangria.
—Kate Bradshaw, The Mercury News, 17 May 2024
See all Example Sentences for shoestring 
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'shoestring.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Dictionary Entries Near shoestring
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“Shoestring.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shoestring. Accessed 1 Jun. 2024.
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