white-shoe

white-shoe noun: a stereotypical male Ivy League college student.

Noun

white-shoe (plural white-shoes)

white-shoe (comparative more white-shoe, superlative most white-shoe)

(US, slang) Effeminate or immature.
(US, slang) Establishment; pertaining to mainstream US social power-structures.
- Dulles had been a junior diplomat after World War I and a white-shoe Wall Street lawyer in the Depression.2007, Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes, Penguin, published 2008, page 26
- In “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change,” Ellen K. Pao traces a journey of disillusionment that culminated in the lawsuit she brought against her employer, the white-shoe venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, for gender discrimination.2017 September 19, Jennifer Szalai, “The Education of Ellen Pao”, in New York Times

স্ত্রীজাতীয়, অপরিণত

For the noun, from their traditional footwear. For the adjective, from the preponderance of Ivy League graduates hired by such firms.

What does white-shoe mean?: White-shoe means a stereotypical male Ivy League college student.
What is white-shoe in Bengali?: White-shoe in Bengali is স্ত্রীজাতীয়, অপরিণত. See White-shoe meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is white-shoe?: White-shoe can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of white-shoe?: The plural of white-shoe is white-shoes.

Adapted from Wiktionary: white-shoe (page history and authors); white-shoe (Bengali Wiktionary) (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-au-white-shoe.ogg.

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