Citations:bootstrappy

Adjective: "(informal) hard-working, self-reliant, and enterprising"

 * 2007, Zagat 2008 Movie Guide, page 164:
 * "Big business" and the "bootstrappy American dream" are satirized in this "sly satire" via the Coen brothers about a "plucky mailroom clerk" who "invents the hula hoop"
 * 2011, Alina Simone, You Must Go and Win: Essays, pages 148-149:
 * Unwilling to accept the strictures of the Russian Orthodox Church, they demonstrated a very bootstrappy, can-do attitude by simply inventing their own religion from scratch.
 * 2014, L. Alison Heller, The Never Never Sisters, unnumbered page:
 * My mom nodded her approval. It was "very bootstrappy" to work late.
 * 2014, Ian Klaus, Forging CapitalismRogues, Swindlers, Frauds, and the Rise of Modern Finance, page 95:
 * London's inhabitants are grimy, bootstrappy, hard done-by, and overdrawn.
 * 2014, Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture, page 129:
 * Recall Howard Rheingold's aforementioned framing of the “digital homesteader,” which harkens to those rough and tumble, bootstrappy American frontiersmen who chose to stake their claim westward.
 * 2015, Sarah Vowell, Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, unnumbered page:
 * A humble, bootstrappy patriot, Knox wooed, then married Lucy Flucker, the highbrow daughter of the Loyalist governor of the province of Massachusetts.


 * 2016, Jeff Zentner, The Serpent King, unnumbered page:
 * A little Southern fetishism never killed anyone. Dill and Travis may have been off-brand for her blog, but they were resoundingly on-brand for her bootstrappy admission essay narrative.
 * 2017, George S. Zorich, Entrepreneurs in Pharmacy And Other Leaders, page 137:
 * I worked the retail side, but also in a very bootstrappy way created other programs.
 * 2019, Eero Laine, Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage, unnumbered page:
 * A billionaire who has battled Donald Trump in the ring and won a ratings war against Ted Turner, Vince McMahon might be the real face of US underdog gumption and bootstrappy determination, even (or maybe especially) as he physically attacks and degrades employees.
 * 2019, Anna Pitoniak, Necessary People, unnumbered page:
 * Look at me, climbing the ladder at KCN: I was a perfect example of that bootstrappy, self-reliant, equal-opportunity American spirit.
 * 2020, Sarah Kurchak, I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder, unnumbered page:
 * This gave me the time and energy to discover my own niche—private clients with mental health issues who felt alienated by bootstrappy mainstream gym culture—and develop that.
 * 2020, Vishen Lakhiani, The Buddha and the Badass: The Secret Spiritual Art of Succeeding at Work, page 15:
 * You might be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or bootstrappy entrepreneur in start-up mode working from a Starbucks.
 * 2020, Victoria R. Montgomery Brown, Digital Goddess: The Unfiltered Lessons of a Female Entrepreneur, page 28:
 * I'd written to Tom Scott over the years, because I was impressed by what he'd achieved—the bootstrappy-ness of it all.