pull oneself up by one's bootstraps
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.24 in modern English
45
Scrabble Score
29
Letters
5
Syllables
13
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "We can't get a loan, so we'll just have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps."
- "It is conjectured that Mr. Murphee will now be enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland river or a barn yard fence by the straps of his boots."
- "Up to a point, civilization can lift itself up by its boot-tags. However unjustly society is organized, certain technical advances are bound to benefit the whole community, because certain kinds of goods are necessarily held in common."
Etymology
Early 19th century US; attested 1834. In original use, often used to refer to pulling oneself over a fence, and implying that someone is attempting or has claimed some ludicrously far-fetched or impossible task. Presumably a variant on a traditional tall tale, as elaborated below. The shift in sense to a possible task appears to have developed in the early 20th century, and the use of the phrase to mean “a ludicrous task” continued into the 1920s. Widely attributed since at least 1901 to The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, (1781) by Rudolf Erich Raspe, where the eponymous Baron pulls himself out of a swamp by his own pigtail, though not by his bootstraps. The Adventures is primarily a collection of centuries-old tall tales, however, and using bootstraps may have arisen as a variant on the same theme.
Inflected Forms
pulls oneself up by one's bootstraps (present, singular)
pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps (participle, present)
pulled oneself up by one's bootstraps (participle, past)
pulled oneself up by one's bootstraps (past)
pull oneself up by one's own bootstraps (alternative)
lift oneself up by one's bootstraps (alternative)
lift oneself up by one's own bootstraps (alternative)
raise oneself up by one's bootstraps (alternative)
raise oneself up by one's own bootstraps (alternative)