shoe-tie

Definitions

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  • noun A ribbon or silk braid for fastening the two sides of a shoe together, usually more ornamental than a shoe-string, and formerly very elaborate: hence used, humorously, as a name for a traveler.

Examples

  • The thought involuntarily pressed on her that she herself must venture, were it but the point of her fairy foot, beyond the prescribed boundary, if she ever hoped to give a lover so reserved and bashful an opportunity of so slight a favour as but to salute her shoe-tie.

    The Talisman, by Walter Scott

  • If I were once more 'brave Master Shoe-tie, the great traveller,' it would irk me, I dare say, to ride thirty miles in a rail-car drawn by one slow horse.

    Nathaniel Parker Willis, 'Letters from under a bridge: And poems'

Note

This word first appeared meaning 'traveler' in Shakespeare's 'Measure for Measure.'