I am reminded, for no particular reason, that the American English idiom to fill [someone\u2019s] shoes<\/i> is entirely unconnected to the British English idiom to fill [someone\u2019s] boots<\/i>.\r\n
The US idiom is about replaceability\u2014when a person is replaced in an institution, the institution must find someone to fill their shoes<\/i>. This is true whether or not they are dead men\u2019s shoes<\/i>\u2014which are opportunities created by someone dying, or more pleasantly, moving on somewhere else, and which is generally, I think, negative in tone. If, for instance, a Lieutenant Governor were to assume the Governor\u2019s office on the Governor\u2019s death, one would disparagingly refer to the new Guv as wearing dead man\u2019s shoes<\/i>. If an admired Governor chooses not to run for re-election, however, the candidates would have big shoes to fill<\/i>.\r\n
The British idiom (and I am a pathetic anglophile but not to the manner born so I may be getting it wrong) is about surfeit. If I set out food and urge you to fill your boots<\/i>, I am urging you to dig in. I think I\u2019ve seen it mostly used about greed, though, when one or another corporation (or politician) is said to be filling their boots<\/i>, often while crying poor.\r\n
I don\u2019t know if there are other kinds of footwear that can be idiomatically filled\u2026 Filling my sandals would be impractical, and thus make a fine idiom for other sorts of impracticality, but as far as I know the idiom doesn\u2019t exist. I might fill my loafers, so as not to be light in them, but that seems both clunky and, you know, awful. Filling one\u2019s socks doesn\u2019t sound good at all. I don\u2019t even know what filling your slippers would entail. Filling your sneakers? Filling a mule? Perhaps shoes and boots are enough.\r\n
Thanks,
-Ed.\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Emptying a boot is a different matter entirely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idioms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18543,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18542\/revisions\/18543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}