bootstrap
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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“I figured we can absolutely bootstrap this with no corporate background, just hard work and the American dream, we’ll work 80-plus hours a week, we’ll make it happen,” Lieu said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
"The deep irony is that this bootstrap idea that we're pursuing now with modern tools and modern ideas is super retro. It's an old idea," Cheung explains.
From Science Daily ● May 19, 2026
SilverSneakers represents just a small slice of that — the costs are not broken out by MedPAC — but it’s significant enough that the bootstrap venture has turned into a big business.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 5, 2025
I think she is deeply wrong to let the tobacco company bootstrap these gas stations onto their suit.
From Slate ● Jun. 20, 2025
A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices.
From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith
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“You should apply if you want to build yourself up while also building a startup society that bootstraps other startup societies,” its website said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 1, 2026
He had no experience in elected office, no notable history of activist organizing, no college degree, no significant success in the private sector, not even a record of pulling himself up by his proverbial bootstraps.
From Slate ● Jul. 8, 2026
But in the U.S., the ethos of grinding and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps is ubiquitous, both in the country’s beginnings and our current environment of always-on technology and work hours.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 15, 2024
I try to instill that in my daughter, but her generation does not accept this concept of pulling up from my bootstraps.
From Salon ● Oct. 26, 2023
Teachers exhorted us to be like him, to lift ourselves from poverty by our bootstraps.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
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But he’s bootstrapped himself into intelligence and with savvy networking and know-how, he becomes indispensable to the British, volunteering as a major to survey land and negotiate treaties with the Native tribes and French army.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 2, 2026
He bootstrapped that company and sold it for over $100 million in 2021.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 4, 2026
The sale, announced last week, caps an impressive career by Ng, a scrappy, diminutive septuagenarian who used her bootstrapped community newspapers “to empower the Asian American community” as she put it this week.
From Seattle Times ● May 29, 2024
But many of these smaller livestream channels are more bootstrapped operations, adherent to the same grind culture their content facilitates.
From Slate ● Sep. 2, 2023
“They’ve always bootstrapped stuff,” yielding cars that were advanced and innovative and that punched above their weight, Mr. Robbins said.
From New York Times ● Apr. 21, 2022
Just like Donald Trump, also the son of a bootstrapping developer, the Kushner boys talk of visiting building sites as children with their father, Charlie.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 15, 2026
Putting aside the chutzpah of the bootstrapping, it’s not clear that the court is wrong.
From Slate ● Jun. 30, 2026
Enter Dell Chandler, a failed English professor turned bootstrapping private detective, hired by Dr. Cutty to investigate.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 12, 2026
It’s a quintessential American story, of bootstrapping from the humblest of origins to the literal highest of heights.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 14, 2023
He had worked as a printer but was now bootstrapping his own print shop on a shoestring, and became entirely self-employed.
From How and When to Be Your Own Doctor by Steve Solomon