单词 | on a shoestring |
释义 | on a shoestringWith 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] Words nearby on a shoestringon a par with, on a pedestal, put, on approval, on a rampage, on a roll, on a shoestring, Onassis, Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy, on a string, on a tangent, Oñate 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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