Word.ws English Dictionary

pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps

pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps is the present participle and gerund 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.

Questions about pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps

What is pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps the present participle and gerund of?
Pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps is the present participle and gerund of pull oneself up by one's bootstraps.

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

  1. pulling one's punches
  2. pulling one's socks up
  3. pulling one's weight
  4. pulling oneself
  5. pulling oneself together
  6. pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps
  7. pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps
  8. pulling out
  9. pulling out all stops
  10. pulling out all the stops
  11. pulling out of a hat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pulling 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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