shoo in vs shoe in

College Confidential Community
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<p>okay, this has been bothering me for far too long. There is no general consensus as to whether the term is “shoo in” (as in, so good they get shooed in) or “shoe in” as in so good they have a shoe in the door. I’ve seen it written in literature both ways, and on this website both ways as well. So cast your votes, is it “shoo in” or “shoe in”, and why?</p>

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<p>Shoe in</p>

<p>The term “shoo” sounds to me like you want someone to go away. “Shoe in” just makes sense to me, like you already have a foot in the door like you said.</p>

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<p>Shoo in is how I’ve always seen it.</p>

<p>Just did a google search, and here’s what I found:</p>

<p>This one is spelled wrongly so often that it’s likely it will eventually end up that way. The correct form is shoo-in, usually with a hyphen. It has been known in that spelling and with the meaning of a certain winner from the 1930s. It came from horse racing, where a shoo-in was the winner of a rigged race.</p>

<p>In turn that seems to have come from the verb shoo, meaning to drive a person or an animal in a given direction by making noises or gestures, which in turn comes from the noise people often make when they do it.</p>

<p>The shift to the horse racing sense seems to have occurred sometime in the early 1900s. C E Smith made it clear how it came about in his Racing Maxims and Methods of Pittsburgh Phil in 1908: “There were many times presumably that ‘Tod’ would win through such manipulations, being ‘shooed in’, as it were”.</p>

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<p>ahhhhhhhhhh. mystery solved.</p>