Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of or being a long-established business known for reputable service and a wealthy clientele: "took a job at ... [a] pronouncedly white-shoe investment-banking firm” ( Connie Bruck).
Wiktionary
- n. US, slang A stereotypical Ivy League student.
- adj. US, slang Effeminate or immature.
- adj. US, slang Establishment; pertaining to mainstream US social power-structures.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. denoting a company or law firm owned and run by members of the WASP elite who are generally conservative
Etymologies
- From white + shoe; their traditional footwear. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“A week or two after Salmi and Kosnoff sent their complaint to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, they headed to a Seattle high-rise to the law offices of Stafford Frey Cooper, a white-shoe firm that defended Fortune 500 clients from civil lawsuits throughout the Pacific Northwest.”
“I wonder how the white-shoe firms felt about missing out on this one ...”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Judicial Law Clerk Without a Law Degree
“Mr. Kanfer avoids naming Bogart's many imitators, but I can recall that even before his death Bogart's spirit glimmered in Edward R. Murrow (the trench coat, the cigarette); in Jack Kennedy (Irish toughness, Harvard wit); in old white-shoe veterans of lonely World War II parachute drops with the OSS; in the writer Lillian Hellman, until she was revealed as a sanctimonious liar not long before her death.”
“Advokat is an attorney at one of Seattle's white-shoe law firms.”
The Single Speed Cyclocross World Championship Heads to Seattle « PubliCola
“This latest drama unfolded simultaneously in Dell's headquarters in Round Rock, Tex.; in H-P's Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters; 3PAR's offices in Fremont, Calif.; and in white-shoe investment banking offices in San Francisco and New York.”
“Thousands of American inmates must represent themselves in such suits — there is no parade of white-shoe law firms at their beck and call.”
“It pays off: Forbes reports than an internal probe at the Securities and Exchange Commission found evidence that "a private-equity firm was able to avoid fraud charges only after enlisting the help of William McLucas, a former SEC director who'd joined white-shoe law firm WilmerHale.”
“So whereas in the old days prestige came to those firms that worked their way up the credit scale to the blue chips, Wall Street's white-shoe firms were motivated to look for less-creditworthy new clients.”
“On the Republican side, there's Mr. LaVerghetta, an attorney at white-shoe law firm Debevoise”
The Wall Street Journal: Upstarts Aim to Unseat Upper East Side Fixture
“Jon Corzine never had the stiff reputation of a white-shoe banker.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘white-shoe’.
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white phrase/words
how white is used
white acajou, white-aproned, white fir, white-armed, white-back, white-arsed, white elm, white-ash breeze, white admiral, white-fly, white ale, white ash and 591 more...
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Words of the Day
glabella, chirotony, nook-shotten, crapehanger, filemot, swirlie, egosurf, lexiphanicism, Ruritanian, stichometry, chrononaut, faldstool and 1999 more...
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Adjectival Arcana
A roster of adjectives that infrequently surface in typical conversation and writing. Many are dredged from scientific or other technical jargon or sieved from examples of disused archaic forms.
unitegmic, acaulescent, reticuloendothelial, ingressive, uniate, acanthopterygian, ossific, epiphysial, perivisceral, acœlomatous, cestoid, acælomate and 7756 more...
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technomom's Words
misology, sacerdotal, omphaloskepsis, jimjams, incunabulum, repose, trecento, chimera, tridecennary, tenebrous, purblind, floruit and 207 more...
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Classassin
Class^Warfare$$$$!
arriviste, parvenu, gigmania, dyvoury, thugly, déclassé, stalko, sudden loss of we..., guttersnipe, mesocracy, nouveau riche, bourgeois and 71 more...
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