DCHP-1 Online

shoepack † [< Am.E by folk etymology < Lenape (Delaware) shipak < machtschipak inferior shoe, as opposed to a moccasin]

• 1 n. a variety of moccasin having uppers of thick, oiled leather that extend above the ankle and, often, a stiff sole. [See picture at larrigan.]

  See also: Canadian shoe  larrigan  

  • 1853  Shoe-packs, a species of mocassin peculiar to the Lower Province, cow-hide boots, and a bonnet rouge for the head, complete the costume of the Canadian lumberman.
  • 1912  . . . while I was still enduring the pain of mal de raquette his shoe-packs had worn through and his feet were imperfectly tied up in pieces of canvas.
  • 1946  . . . the habitants . . . shod their feet, not in honest English boots, but with cowhide made up after the fashion of the Indian moccasin ("shoe-packs").
  • 1956  Much better to have walked in, straight from the canoe, with the worn shoepacks, the shirt and breeches stained with balsam and smudged by campfires, the black bird's-nest of beard

• 2 n. a kind of boot having high, laced uppers of heavy oiled leather and thick soles, often of hard rubber.

  See also: beef boot  Canada boot  

  • 1882  . . . he came pounding along Notre Dame street, in Montreal, in his red shirt and tan-colored shupac boots, all dripping wet. . . .
  • 1904  Inside their high-laced, capacious "shoe-packs" were several pairs of yarn socks.
  • 1940  It is only in the fall and the spring that the snow is soggy, and in those seasons shoepacks with rubber bottoms and leather uppers replace the moccasins.
  • 1962  Harold stared at a disk of melting snow on one of his dubbined shoepacks.