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Definition of "white-shoe" []

  • 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). (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "white-shoe" in a sentence
  • "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 ..."
  • "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."
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