Word.ws English Dictionary

lift oneself up by one's bootstraps

lift oneself up by one's bootstraps is the alternative form of pull oneself up by one's bootstraps.

Meaning of pull oneself up by one's bootstraps

Verb

pull oneself up by one's bootstraps (third-person singular simple present pulls oneself up by one's bootstraps, present participle pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps, simple past and past participle pulled oneself up by one's bootstraps)

  1. (idiomatic) To begin an enterprise or recover from a setback without any outside help; to succeed only by one's own efforts or abilities.
    • We can't get a loan, so we'll just have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.

Forms of lift oneself up by one's bootstraps

third-person singular presentlifts oneself up by one's bootstraps
present participlelifting oneself up by one's bootstraps
past participlelifted oneself up by one's bootstraps
pastlifted oneself up by one's bootstraps

Questions about lift oneself up by one's bootstraps

What is lift oneself up by one's bootstraps the alternative form of?
Lift oneself up by one's bootstraps is the alternative form of pull oneself up by one's bootstraps.

Words near lift oneself up by one's bootstraps in the dictionary

  1. lift nets
  2. lift off
  3. lift one's game
  4. lift one's hand against
  5. lift oneself up by one's boot-tags
  6. lift oneself up by one's bootstraps
  7. lift oneself up by one's own boot-tags
  8. lift oneself up by one's own bootstraps
  9. lift oneself up by one's own waistbands
  10. lift pass
  11. lift passes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lift oneself up by one's bootstraps (page history and authors); pull oneself up by one's bootstraps (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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Cite this entry: “lift oneself up by one's bootstraps.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lift_oneself_up_by_one%27s_bootstraps. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.