Meaning of soft shoe | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A kind of tap dancing performed in soft-soled shoes, popular in vaudeville.
   uncountable
2. A speech, explanation, sales pitch, or other set of remarks delivered in a restrained or conciliatory manner in order to persuade, distract, or otherwise influence someone.
   idiomatic, uncountable

Examples

“Between Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Newley there's a delightful exhibition of the dances and their origin dating gack a few hundred years, from the clog to the buck, the wing, and the buck and wing, and on to the old soft shoe and more.”

“Like the technically astounding and spiritually hollow production numbers, however, [Emily] Blunt can't situate the sentimental energy in a deeper foundation. Her excellence gets left in a sort of vacuum when paired with the fully extraneous train wreck of a visit with Meryl Streep as kooky Poppins cousin Topsy or some discomfiting soft shoe from a creaky Dick Van Dyke.”

“Is the salesman's soft-shoe appropriate in a time of national mourning?”

CEFR level