Word.ws English Dictionary

on a shoestring

on a shoestring prepositional phrase: on a very tight budget; with few resources or little money.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) On a very tight budget; with few resources or little money.
    • The first year after we bought the house, we lived on a shoestring, but we survived.

Questions about on a shoestring

What does on a shoestring mean?
On a shoestring means on a very tight budget; with few resources or little money.
What part of speech is on a shoestring?
On a shoestring is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on a shoestring in the dictionary

  1. on a plate
  2. on a platter
  3. on a promise
  4. on a regular basis
  5. on a roll
  6. on a shoestring
  7. on a silver platter
  8. on a sixpence
  9. on a stick
  10. on a stretch
  11. on a string

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on a shoestring (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-on a shoestring.ogg.

Cite this entry: “on a shoestring.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_a_shoestring. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.