Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A person who cleans and polishes shoes and boots, especially one who makes a living by this.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who polishes shoes; same as bootblack.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun One who polishes shoes as an occupation.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun large showy Asiatic shrub or small tree having large single or double red to deep-red flowers
  • noun a person who polishes shoes and boots

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

shoe +‎ black

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Examples

  • "Yes -- he's a--" I was going to say "shoeblack," but I stopped myself in time, and said, "a little boy."

    My Friend Smith A Story of School and City Life Talbot Baines Reed 1872

  • There is a boy, perhaps fifteen, pushing a wheelbarrow of small items that are for sale: a single roll of toilet paper, a neat metal disk containing shoeblack, and other soft clear plastic wrappers around fist-sized packages of nuts.

    Between Expectations Md Meghan Maclean Weir 2011

  • There is a boy, perhaps fifteen, pushing a wheelbarrow of small items that are for sale: a single roll of toilet paper, a neat metal disk containing shoeblack, and other soft clear plastic wrappers around fist-sized packages of nuts.

    Between Expectations Md Meghan Maclean Weir 2011

  • Oh, to miss the sight of her because I was wet through and bedraggled, and had not so much as five sous to give to a shoeblack for removing the least little spot of mud from my boot!

    The Magic Skin 2007

  • There were pictures of a pauper cabin in Ireland, from which it was pretended I came; others in which I was represented as a lacquey and shoeblack.

    The Memoires of Barry Lyndon 2006

  • Louis could imagine hurling the shoes out the window, but instead, he cleaned them each in turn, smearing a rag in shoeblack and buffing them to a shine.

    The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre Dominic Smith 2006

  • A moment before he had been cursing and swearing at me, and speaking to me as if I had been his shoeblack.

    The Great Hoggarty Diamond 2006

  • Louis could imagine hurling the shoes out the window, but instead, he cleaned them each in turn, smearing a rag in shoeblack and buffing them to a shine.

    The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre Dominic Smith 2006

  • Who would have thought such a nobleman vood turn shoeblack?

    The Fatal Boots 2006

  • He goes to picture-galleries, and is more ignorant about Art than a French shoeblack.

    The Book of Snobs 2006

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