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on a shoestring
Idioms and Phrases
With very limited financial means, as in The newlyweds were living on a shoestring . The precise allusion in this term is unclear. One fanciful theory is that debtors in British prisons would lower a shoe by its laces from a window so as to collect funds from visitors or passers-by. A more likely theory is that it alludes to the slender shape of a shoelace, likening it to slender resources. [Late 1800s]Example Sentences
“We’re working on a shoestring now,†McDonnell said.
Yet for beginning drivers from L.A. and Orange County, who are struggling to race on a shoestring budget, that track might just as well be on another planet.
Though the ceremony recently lifted its $35 million budget cap for eligible contenders, its nominating juries, which are mostly made up of a handful of film journalists, still tend to favor movies that were made on a shoestring.
While Rome was riven by “internecine strife†and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was “constitutionally stable†with “an enormous industrial base.â€
Put together on a shoestring budget with donated clothes, the video went viral after Mukherjee reposted it on his Instagram feed with a heart emoji.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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