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bootstrap

[boot-strap] / ˈbutˌstræp /


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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"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

In science-fiction scenarios of first contact with extraterrestrials, humans usually bootstrap a common language with mathematics, demonstrating that we know the digits of pi and so forth.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 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

“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

“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

We can’t just pull ourselves up by the bootstraps when we’ve lost everything.

From Slate ● Sep. 14, 2023

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

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

“We watched the pilot, and we were extremely impressed with how she’d bootstrapped this and essentially made it herself,” Ravi Nandan, the head of television at A24, said in an interview.

From New York Times ● Jan. 22, 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

Their worries — AI systems deceiving their creators, bootstrapping their own code, or launching autonomous cyberattacks — show up in scientific literature.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 22, 2026

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

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




Vocabulary lists containing bootstrap


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