shoehorn

UK/ˈʃuːˌhɔːn//ˈʃuːˌhɔɹn/

shoehorn noun: a smooth tool that assists in putting the foot into a shoe, by sliding the heel in after the toe is in place.

Image: Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

shoehorn (plural shoehorns)

A smooth tool that assists in putting the foot into a shoe, by sliding the heel in after the toe is in place.
(derogatory) Anything by which a transaction is facilitated; a medium.
- I was about sixty feet ahead of this film in many spots, which speaks rather poorly for it. And I resented the heartthrobs which were planted in my bosom with a shoehorn via the "little child" process.1935, Don Herold, Going to the Movies, Life Magazine January 1935.
(obsolete) Anything which draws on or allures; an inducement.
- Now you cannot but observe, that most of our fine young Ladies readily fall in with the Direction of the Graver sort, to retain in their Service, by some small Encouragement, as great a Number as they can of supernumerary and insignificant Fellows, which they use like Whiflers, and commonly call...1652, Richard Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

shoehorn (third-person singular simple present shoehorns, present participle shoehorning, simple past and past participle shoehorned)

(literally) To use a shoehorn.
(figuratively, transitive) To force (something) into (a tight space); to squeeze (something) into (a schedule, etc); to exert great effort to insert or include (something); to include (something) despite potent reasons not to.
- I shoehorned his dozen burgeoning bags into the backseat of my tiny car, and off we went.
- His staff want to shoehorn an extra stop into his already packed campaigning schedule.
(figuratively, transitive) To force some current event into alignment with some (usually unconnected) agenda, especially when it is fallacious.
- People claiming to be psychic may shoehorn an event into fulfillment of some vague past prediction.
- After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, fundamentalist Christian evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson shoehorned the events to their agenda. They claimed that "liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals and abortion rights...2015 April 5, Robert Todd Carroll, “Shoehorning”, in The Skeptic's Dictionary

More languagesFewer languages

Noun
plural	shoehorns
alternative form	shoe horn
alternative form	shoe-horn
Verb
third-person singular present	shoehorns
present participle	shoehorning
past participle	shoehorned
past	shoehorned

From shoe + horn.

What does shoehorn mean?: Shoehorn means a smooth tool that assists in putting the foot into a shoe, by sliding the heel in after the toe is in place.
What is shoehorn in Nepali?: Shoehorn in Nepali is बगलिस (bagalis). See Shoehorn meaning in Nepali.
What part of speech is shoehorn?: Shoehorn can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce shoehorn?: Shoehorn is pronounced /ˈʃuːˌhɔːn/ (UK).
What is the plural of shoehorn?: The plural of shoehorn is shoehorns.

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoehorn (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-shoehorn.ogg, en-au-shoehorn.ogg.

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