Word.ws English Dictionary

shoe

UK/ˈʃuː//ˈʃu/

shoe noun: a protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of leather or synthetic material. Shoes generally do not extend above the ankle, as opposed to boots, which do.

shoe: a protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole...
Image: CC BY 3.0 no, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

shoe (plural shoes or (archaic, dialectal) shoon or (obsolete) shoen)

  1. (footwear) A protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of leather or synthetic material. Shoes generally do not extend above the ankle, as opposed to boots, which do.
    • Get your shoes on now, or you'll be late for school.
  2. A piece of metal designed to be attached to a horse's foot as a means of protection; a horseshoe.
    • Throw the shoe from behind the line, and try to get it to land circling (a ringer) or touching the far stake.
  3. A device for holding multiple decks of playing cards, allowing more games to be played by reducing the time between shuffles.
  4. Something resembling a shoe in form, position, or function, such as a brake shoe.
    • Remember to turn the rotors when replacing the brake shoes, or they will wear out unevenly.
    1. A band of iron or steel, or a ship of wood, fastened to the bottom of the runner of a sleigh, or any vehicle which slides on the snow.
    2. A drag, or sliding piece of wood or iron, placed under the wheel of a loaded vehicle, to retard its motion in going down a hill.
    3. The part of a brake for a wheeled vehicle which presses upon the wheel to retard its motion.
    4. A trough-shaped or spout-shaped member, put at the bottom of the water leader coming from the eaves gutter, so as to throw the water off from the building.
    5. A trough or spout for conveying grain from the hopper to the eye of the millstone.
    6. An inclined trough in an ore-crushing mill.
    7. An iron socket or plate to take the thrust of a strut or rafter.
    8. An iron socket to protect the point of a wooden pile.
    9. A plate, or notched piece, interposed between a moving part and the stationary part on which it bears, to take the wear and afford means of adjustment; called also slipper and gib.
    10. Part of a current collector on electric trains which provides contact either with a live rail or an overhead wire (fitted to a pantograph in the latter case).
    11. (historical) An ingot of gold or silver shaped somewhat like a traditional Chinese shoe, formerly used in trade in the Far East.
      • The finest gold among them is 100 touch, called Sycee, i. e. pure gold without alloy: so that if a shoe of gold touch 93, then it hath 93 parts of fine gold and 7 parts alloy.1806, Lawrence Dundas Campbell, E. Samuel, The Asiatic Annual Register, page 56
  5. The outer cover or tread of a pneumatic tire, especially for an automobile.
  6. (broadly, slang) A pneumatic tire, especially for an automobile.
  7. (slang) A fake passport.

Verb

shoe (third-person singular simple present shoes, present participle shoeing, simple past shod or shoed, past participle (obsolete) shodden or shod or shoed)

  1. (intransitive) To put shoes on one's own feet.
    • Men and women clothed and shod for the ascent.
  2. (transitive) To put shoes on someone or something else's feet, especially to put horseshoes on a horse.
    • "Old Jimmy Harris only shoed her last week, and I'd swear to his make among ten thousand."1874, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXXII, in Far from the Madding Crowd
  3. (intransitive) To cover an object with a protective layer of material.
    • The billiard cue stick was shod in silver.
    • And they had been made by the same brand of tire as that which shod the car I sat in!1930, Sax Rohmer, The Day the World Ended, published 1969, page iv. 38

Proper noun capitalized: Shoe

Shoe (plural Shoes)

  1. A surname.

shoe meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

shoe in Hindi

protective covering for the foot
जूता jūtā

shoe in Tamil

protective covering for the foot
காலணி kālaṇi

shoe in Marathi

protective covering for the foot
बूट būṭ

shoe in Urdu

protective covering for the foot
جُوتا jūtā, کَفْش kafś
More languagesFewer languages
shoe in Bengali
জুতা juta
shoe in Telugu
చెప్పు ceppu, షూ ṣū
shoe in Malayalam
ചെരുപ്പ് ceruppŭ
shoe in Kannada
ಕೆರ kera
shoe in Punjabi
ਜੁੱਤੀ juttī, جُتّی juttī
shoe in Gujarati
જૂતા jūtā
shoe in Odia
ଜୋତା jotā
shoe in Sanskrit
पादत्राण pādatrāṇa, उपानह् upānáh
shoe in Sinhala
සපත්තු sapattu
shoe in Assamese
জোতা züta
shoe in Nepali
जूता jūtā
shoe in Pashto
پڼې paṇe, بوټ boṭ
shoe in Tagalog
sapatos
shoe in Arabic
حِذَاء ḥiḏāʔ, نَعْل naʕl, جَزْمَة jazma
shoe in Malay
kasut, sepatu
shoe in Indonesian
sepatu
shoe in Thai
รองเท้า rɔɔng-táao, เกือก gʉ̀ʉak
shoe in Vietnamese
giày
shoe in Myanmar
ခြေနင်း hkrenang:, ဖိနပ် hpi.nap, ရှူးဖိနပ် hru:hpi.nap

Examples of shoe in a sentence

  • If he doesn't pay off the mafia, he’ll wear cement shoes to the bottom of the drink!
  • She gave a pair of shoes to her husband for their anniversary.
  • There’s a hole in my shoe. Her stocking has a hole in it.

All 40 example sentences with shoe

Synonyms of shoe

Forms of shoe

Noun
pluralshoes
plural (archaic, dialectal)shoon
plural (obsolete)shoen
Verb
third-person singular presentshoes
present participleshoeing
pastshod
pastshoed
past participleshod
past participleshoed
past participle (obsolete)shodden
Proper noun
pluralShoes

Plural of shoe: shoes

Origin of shoe

From Middle English scho, sho, from Old English sċōh (“shoe”), from Proto-West Germanic *skōh, from Proto-Germanic *skōhaz (“shoe”), of unclear etymology; possibly a derivation from *skehaną (“to move quickly”), from Proto-Indo-European *skek- (“to move quickly, jump”). Eclipsed non-native Middle English sabatine, sabatoun (“shoe”) from Medieval Latin sabatēnum, sabatum (“shoe, slipper”) (compare Old Occitan sabatō, Spanish zapato (“shoe”), French sabot (“wooden shoe, clog”), Italian ciabatta). The archaic plural shoon is from Middle English shon, from Old English scōn, scōum (“shoes”, dative plural) and scōna (“shoes'”, genitive plural); it is cognate with Scots shuin (“shoes”). See also Scots shae, West Frisian skoech, Low German Schoh, Dutch schoen, German Schuh, Bavarian Schuach, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish sko, Tocharian B skāk (“balcony”).

Words formed from shoe

Phrases with shoe

91 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with shoe

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about shoe

What does shoe mean?
Shoe means a protective covering for the foot, with a bottom part composed of thick leather or plastic sole and often a thicker heel, and a softer upper part made of leather or synthetic material. Shoes generally do not extend above the ankle, as opposed to boots, which do.
What is shoe in Hindi?
Shoe in Hindi is जूता (jūtā). See Shoe meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is shoe?
Shoe can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce shoe?
Shoe is pronounced /ˈʃuː/ (UK).
What is the plural of shoe?
The plural of shoe is shoes.

Words near shoe in the dictionary

  1. shoder
  2. shoders
  3. shodes
  4. shoding
  5. shodo
  6. shoe
  7. shoe beam
  8. shoe beams
  9. shoe block
  10. shoe blocks
  11. shoe bolt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoe (page history and authors); Shoe (page history and authors); उपानह् (Sanskrit) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-shoe.ogg.

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