John had to get along on a shoestring.
Source: tatoeba (52641)
Shoestring
//ˈʃuːstɹɪŋ//
Synonyms for "shoestring" (21 found)
Ranked by relevance and common usage.
Related word relations
OpenGloss and ConceptNet supply richer edges like generalizations, collocations, and derivations.
More general
4 entriesSynonyms
2 entriescapable of
1 entriescoordinate
1 entriesderived
17 entriesShowing 16 of 17 words.
derived from
2 entrieshas context
1 entriesis a
1 entriesrelated to
13 entriesTranslations
18 translations across 6 languages.
Bulgarian
2 entries- жулиен noun (long, narrow cut of a food — see also julienne)
- ограничени средства noun (very little money; a tight budget)
Czech
1 entries- napjatý rozpočet noun (very little money; a tight budget)
Dutch
1 entries- grijpstuiver noun (very little money; a tight budget)
Finnish
4 entries- jalka adj (of a catch or tackle: made near the ground, close to a player’s shoes)
- julienne noun (long, narrow cut of a food — see also julienne)
- kengännauhabudjetti noun (very little money; a tight budget)
- pitkulainen noun (object that is long and thin)
French
2 entries- allumette noun (long, narrow cut of a food — see also julienne)
- julienne noun (long, narrow cut of a food — see also julienne)
Russian
3 entries- небольша́я су́мма де́нег noun (very little money; a tight budget)
- небольши́е сбереже́ния noun (very little money; a tight budget)
- соло́мка noun (long, narrow cut of a food — see also julienne)
Sample sentences
13 total sentences available.
About the wedding ... It's a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be the main attraction, so instead of doing it on a shoestring, why not pull out all the stops and make a great show of it?
Source: tatoeba (238726)
The lab runs on a shoestring.
Source: tatoeba (10641251)
Our lab runs on a shoestring.
Source: tatoeba (10659609)
Showing 4 of 13 available sentences.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.