Word.ws English Dictionary

dead men's shoes

dead men's shoes noun: a position or property that is only attainable by someone else upon the current holder's death.

Noun

dead men's shoes pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) A position or property that is only attainable by someone else upon the current holder's death.
    • Folks come in sometimes when I'm lonely and make jest of it, saying that a creaking gate hangs long, and that it's weary waiting for dead men's shoes.1897, Joseph Smith Fletcher, God's Failures

Words that rhyme with dead men's shoes

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about dead men's shoes

What does dead men's shoes mean?
Dead men's shoes means a position or property that is only attainable by someone else upon the current holder's death.
What part of speech is dead men's shoes?
Dead men's shoes is a noun.

Words near dead men's shoes in the dictionary

  1. dead men can tell no tales
  2. dead men tell no tales
  3. dead men walking
  4. dead men's bells
  5. dead men's fingers
  6. dead men's shoes
  7. dead metaphor
  8. dead metaphors
  9. dead money
  10. dead name
  11. dead named

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dead men's shoes (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-dead men's shoes.ogg.

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