shoe-leather
Leather that is used to make shoesLeather that is used to make shoes.
Meaning
4 senses(countable, uncountable)Leather that is used to make shoes.
(uncountable)Leather from which shoes are made that is worn out through walking.
(broadly, countable, idiomatic, uncountable)The sweat of one's brow; effort; investigatory effort.
They expended a lot of shoe-leather in hunting down every lead.
(countable, derogatory, figuratively, slang, uncountable)Tough meat, especially cheap meat.
The school certainly wasn't breaking the bank by feeding us — when it wasn't gruel it was shoe-leather.
Origin
From shoe + leather.From shoe + leather.
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: shoe-leathersWord family
3 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.