"White Shoe" & Yale University

[A. Vine]

Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>     From ESQUIRE, September 1953, pg. 59:
>
> _HOW SHOE CAN YOU GET?_
> _America's premier student of snobs and brows peers through the ivied windows at hallowed precincts and their new social hierarchy of White Shoe, Brown Shoe, Black Shoe_
> _by RUSSELL LYNES_
> (...) Shoe
>      At Yale there is a system for pigeonholing the members of the college community which is based on the word "shoe."  Shoe bears some relation to the word chic, and when you say that a fellow is "terribly shoe" you mean that he is a crumb in the upper social crust of the college, though a more kindly metaphor might occur to you.  You talk of a "shoe" fraternity or a "shoe" crowd, for example, but you can also describe a man's manner of dress as "shoe."


Related to "shoe-in"?
--
Andrea Vine, avine at eng.sun.com, iPlanet i18n architect
A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging--it is the skin of a
living thought, and may vary greatly in color and content according to the
circumstances and time in which it is used. - Supreme Court Justice Holmes