this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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This meme made me look up the term "bootstrapped."
Which then made me wonder what a "bootstrap" is even supposed to look like.
Which led to a frustrating failure of an image search where I learned that even DuckDuckGo stopped accepting a minus sign to exclude search terms. Trying to look up any combination of "bootstrap -code -coding -web" etc. failed to bring up anything except the purple Bootstrap logo. My search was eventually resolved by separating the word into "boot" and "strap," but that's bullshit because according to multiple dictionary sites, "bootstrap" (in reference to a strap attached to a boot) is, indeed, one word. I even tried Google (lord help me), just to confirm this isn't some niche DDG difference.
It seems that literal bootstraps are so out of fashion, that simply finding pictures of them is a challenge. Yet people keep using the phrase "pick yourself up by your bootstraps" as if it's an intuitive symbol everyone understands. I don't know about you, but I've never used bootstraps, and the concept sounds as old-timey as hitching a wagon to a horse.
Not sure what Century you're hailing from, but all my boots have bootstraps, so do my climbing shoes.
So, a lot of times archaic terms get preserved in an idiom. A good example of this is "moot point" or "bated breath". Most people understand what those phrases mean, but they probably don't know what a "moot" is or what "bated" means. This is not that, though.
A bootstrap is the strap at the back of a boot that you use to help pull the boot onto your foot. Every pair of boots I've ever owned has had them.