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
One promising strategy is known as the "bootstrap" approach.
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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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
Those who pull themselves up by the bootstraps should be able to attain a life materially more comfortable than their parents’.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 20, 2025
“We gotta get our bootstraps together and get back on the drawing board, look at the film and try to make the best of these last two games.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 10, 2024
“You’ve got to pick up the bootstraps of your state until your state finally cares for all of its families,” Becerra said.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 27, 2024
American autobiographical literature is filled with numerous accounts of remarkable men who pulled themselves to the summit by their bootstraps.
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
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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
Directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, the bootstrapped, lo-fi documentary was a smash hit, grossing more than $22 million on a $65,000 budget.
From New York Times ● May 12, 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
Putting aside the chutzpah of the bootstrapping, it’s not clear that the court is wrong.
From Slate ● Jun. 30, 2026
In that context, the bootstrapping process to cheat social death is a remarkable feat of development.
From Salon ● Nov. 10, 2024
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
If the bootstrapping narrative has been the norm in Congress up until now, that’s no coincidence, since it’s a story that flatters the typical politician in the House.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 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 Solomon, Steve