What is "bootblack"

Usage examples of "bootblack".

In the same instant, Theo saw Carrots snatch a box from a bootblack near him and with a wild yell of defiance, hurl it through one of the car windows.

Most of the family moved in with him (a typical arrangement in debtors' prison, which was a fairly open place), but twelve-year-old Charles lived outside in rented rooms so he could work in a factory, pasting labels on bottles of bootblacking (a kind of shoe polish).

I was disguised as an old woman with a floppy hat and had smeared bootblacking on the bandages to give me a black face.

For six dreadful months, he was forced to work as an apprentice in a bootblacking factory, pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish.

As he passed, Brak could hear him wheedling: "Myrkjartan is a most particular friend of mine, so let me speak to him at once, you grinning ninnies, or you'll all find yourselves turned into bootblacking rags.

All of us would become shoeshiners, and the professional bootblacks would take over the country.

Pretty soon all the shoes will be shined, the war will be over, they'll be nickel-and-dime bootblacks again, and we'll look back and laugh at the whole absurd interlude.

As the heart and soul of the British printing industry, Fleet Street was clogged by literally hundreds of newspaper reporters, ink-stained printers' journeymen and apprentices, bootblacks, newsboys scurrying along with stacks of the latest editions piled high, and women of dubious status all jostling elbows as they fought for space in the pubs, comandeered hansom cabs, and paid street urchins to run errands for them—all struggling to outwit one another in the business of keeping the Empire apprised of the latest news.

I was going to get hold of some of the money Gaspard left, and go and buy that double-damned hotel, and throw everybody there out of his job, from the manager down to the bootblacks, and give the place to Giuseppina, to burn it down if she wanted to.

Beggars pleaded, touts wheedled, peddlers hawked, newsboys shouted, bootblacks chanted.

Native boys would kick his buckets and spill the lemonade, and should he find a pair of shoes to shine, all the native bootblacks would surround him and pester him with practical jokes and filthy language, so that the customer would leave before his shine was finished.

Over in England, they ranged from bootblacks to the actual king himself.