Answer:
According to the Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins,
"The expression may have come from faro [a card game], but it isn't recorded until 1904, although *shoestring gambler* for a 'petty, tinhorn gambler,' is recorded 10 years or so earlier.
*On a shoestring* suggests tht one's resources are limited to the laces of one's shoes."
You can find an expanded explanation of the word on the Random House Mavens' Word of the Day Web site, http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/.
Click on alphabetical and then on S.
The OED Online, available on NYPL's Electronic Resources page at any library branch, has two relevant historical citations:
2. A small or inadequate amount of money; a very little capital; a small margin. Chiefly in phr. on a shoe-string. colloq. (orig. U.S.).
[1882 Century Mag. Apr. 884/2 [He] could draw to a shoe-string, as the saying went, and obtain a tan-yard!]
1904 Cosmopolitan May 89 He..speculated ‘on a shoe~string’an exceedingly slim margin.
1926 J. BLACK You can't Win viii. 90 The new owners had no bankroll, just opened up on a shoestring.
1932 Atlantic Monthly Mar. 310/1 Every business man who has made a big success of himself started on a shoestring.
1957 Listener 28 Nov. 893/3 Reformative efforts have to be..as they say, ‘run on a shoe-string’.
1977 C. MCCULLOUGH Thorn Birds xvii. 441 Australians in England, youth-hosteling on a shoestring.
4b. attrib. Operating on a shoe-string, costing or spending little; cheap, informal;petty.
1890 J. P. QUINN Fools of Fortune 494 The gamblers, aside from a lot of ‘hangers on’, known as ‘shoestring’ or ‘tin horn’ gamblers,
do not figure in the criminal records.
1923 ‘B. M. BOWER’
Parowan Bonanza xi. 137 The little shoestring propositions that go broke and leave empty houses behind them.
1936 Sun (Baltimore) 20 Nov. 1/5 The governors of the Federal Reserve System today proposed steps to plug up loopholes through which ‘shoe~string’
and other operators have been able to trade extensively without even posting margins.
1941 B. SCHULBERG What makes Sammy Run? vi. 123 A shoe~string producer..had bought the stock shots from Hell's Angels and
Wings and needed an airplane story.
1958 Vogue Oct. 203 Winter after winter ski-crazy students flock to the snow for shoestring holidays which have been planned to the last farthing.
1959 ‘M. NEVILLE’ Sweet Night for Murder i. 17 She talked, thought, dreamed clothes. On a shoe-string allowance, however, she could do little about them.
1977 S. Wales Guardian 27 Oct. 1/3 The Education Committee was being penny wise and pound foolish by giving some contracts to small
private contractors running on a shoe-string budget and using non-union labour.
1978 J. KRANTZ Scruples iii. 78 The ad that launched Spider was for a new type of fingernail hardener, put out by a shoe-string company.
|
Sources:
Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, Rev.& expanded ed.(New York: Facts On File,Inc., 1997) p. 610
"Shoestring," Oxford English Dictionary, Online edition, 2002. NYPL Electronic Resources Web page. http://www.nypl.org/branch/iresources.html
Above Web site accessed April 25, 2002
|
