shoe-leather

Leather that is used to make shoes.

Outside of patent leathers and specialties, I know of no other types of shoe leathers which are commanding replacement costs today.

Naturally, this aristocrat of shoe leathers costs more than ordinary leather – and, for the past two years, it has been all but unobtainable in this country.

Leather from which shoes are made that is worn out through walking.

In old times, if a Coniston peasant had any business at Ulverstone, he walked to Ulverstone; spent nothing but shoe-leather on the road, drank at the streams, and if he spent a couple of batz when he got to Ulverstone, "it was the end of the world." But now, he would never think of doing such a thing! He first walks three miles in a contrary direction, to a railroad station, and then travels by railroad twenty-four miles to Ulverstone, paying two shillings fare.

Save on shoe leather [letter title] […] Pounding the sidewalks can seriously wear you out.

The sweat of one's brow; effort; investigatory effort.

They expended a lot of shoe-leather in hunting down every lead.

Another way in which the laity expressed their yearning to break through the barrier separating them from the divine was to journey in pilgrimage to sacred places or shrines, so that they might offer their prayers in an especially powerful and effective setting. This was a devotion in which a layperson’s shoeleather was as good as that of any priest.

Tough meat, especially cheap meat.

The school certainly wasn't breaking the bank by feeding us — when it wasn't gruel it was shoe-leather.

Basic, old-fashioned or traditional; specifically (journalism) shoe-leather journalism or shoe-leather reporting: journalism involving walking from place to place observing things and speaking to people, rather than sitting indoors at a des

When we set out to produce the site full time, everything we did went on the site, but the reporting for the site hasn't changed. I don't think it ever will. It's basic shoe leather reporting, hunting down sources and documents and confirming authenticity.

The book, wrought from old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting of a type that's disappearing faster than nonfranchised lunch counters on Main Street, isn't chiefly a tale of drugs and crime, of dysfunction and despair, but a recession-era tragedy scaled for an "Our Town," Thornton Wilder stage and seemingly based on a script by William S. Burroughs.