Word.ws English Dictionary

shoehorned

shoehorned is the simple past and past participle of shoehorn.

Meaning of shoehorn

Verb

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

  1. (literally) To use a shoehorn.
  2. (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.
  3. (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.

See all 6 meanings of shoehorn

Questions about shoehorned

What is shoehorned the simple past and past participle of?
Shoehorned is the simple past and past participle of shoehorn.

Words near shoehorned in the dictionary

  1. shoegazey
  2. shoegazing
  3. shoegazy
  4. shoegear
  5. shoehorn
  6. shoehorned
  7. shoehorning
  8. shoehorns
  9. shoeicide bomber
  10. shoeicide bombers
  11. shoeies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shoehorned (page history and authors); 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.

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