fill someone's shoes
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Replace someone in a role or position
Literally: fill the physical shoes of another
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
And if you're to try and fill her shoes, which I very much doubt you'll ever do, but if you're to be even half the woman that she was, may God have mercy on her, then you'll need all the reminding I can give you.’
In any case, young Gavin can always fill his shoes if he doesn't appear — he's been acting as understudy.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “fill someone's shoes” mean?
Replace someone in a role or position Literally: fill the physical shoes of another
Is “fill someone's shoes” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.