as in cramming
to fit (people or things) into a tight space
the organizers of the county fair shoehorned the craft booths between the midway and the farm exhibits
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Recent Examples of shoehorning
No longer shoehorning into skates never made for her, the next version of someone else’s ideal.
—
Marcus Thompson Ii, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2026
Marcus Thompson Ii, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2026
Recent Examples of Synonyms for shoehorning
Verb
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Instead of cramming huge amounts of fiber into one meal, fiberlayering emphasizes distributing fiber steadily across the day and pulling it from a wide range of whole foods.—
Kathleen Ferraro,
Verywell Health,
5 Mar. 2026
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Instead of cramming more expensive computers into the cars themselves, the team led by postdoctoral researcher Kun Woo Cho decided to put the brains into the road.—
Mrigakshi Dixit,
Interesting Engineering,
3 Mar. 2026
Verb
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Other business leaders have trialed, but then dialed back, four-day work week experiments after seeing the strain of squeezing five days of work into four.—
Sydney Lake,
Fortune,
3 Mar. 2026
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The business has been brutal for the last couple of years — the pandemic, the strikes, the profit squeezing that led to a bunch of reduced production.—
Bloomberg,
Mercury News,
2 Mar. 2026
Verb
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Three successive Gators singled to start the inning, loading the bases with no outs.—
Adam Lichtenstein,
Sun Sentinel,
1 Mar. 2026
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Dallas is fortunate to have Lian Bichsel back in the lineup for the first time since November, but Nill may want to add another top-four defenseman at the deadline, loading up before a deep playoff run.—
Lia Assimakopoulos,
Dallas Morning News,
1 Mar. 2026
Verb
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As Sundance became a global icon, part of its identity stemmed from wedging this gorilla of a festival into the birdcage of a tiny resort town.—
Chris O'Falt,
IndieWire,
30 Jan. 2026
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The couple often kept the window closed by wedging a pole into the window track, records show, but knew that some of the children in the home had learned how to remove it the previous December.—
Laura Bauer,
Kansas City Star,
29 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Shoehorning.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/shoehorning. Accessed 9 Mar. 2026.
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