Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the DAY: Gumshoe
The reason private detectives are called gumshoes dates back to the 1800s, when some shoes had soles made of gum rubber. Before that, most shoes had soles made of heavy fabric, leather or even wood. Starting around the late 1800s, the first rubber-soled shoes, called plimsolls, were developed and manufactured in the United States. The early canvas and rubber shoes were called plimsolls because the horizontal band joining the canvas upper to the sole resembled the plimsoll line on a ship’s hull, the water line that indicates how much cargo can be safely loaded. Flat rubber-soled shoes are still called plimsolls in England.
Rubber is created by tapping sap, or gum, from a rubber tree. Hence, the shoes had gum soles. Soft-soled shoes allowed for quiet footsteps and “to gumshoe” became slang for sneaking around. We still call them sneakers (in England they call them “trainers”). Initially, “gumshoe” was used for anyone stealthily walking around – it could refer to a thief, robber or police detective. Eventually gumshoe became a slang term for a private detective, along with terms like snoop, private eye, shamus and Pinkerton, after Scottish emmigrant Allan Pinkerton, the founder of America’s first detective agency.
“Gumshoe” has acquired an even more modern connotation since a British designer founded a company that turns recycled chewing gum into a new material, Gum-tec, to make shoes. The company manufactures shoes made of 20% recycled gum and calls them appropriately enough, Gumshoes. According to the company, almost 3.3 million pounds of chewing gum are scraped off urban pavements every year at a clean-up cost in the millions of dollars. Gumshoes uses about 2.2 pounds of gum for every four pairs of shoes and gum bins have been placed all over the UK to promote the recycling of chewing gum. You might say this chewing gum entrepreneur got her company off the ground, stuck to it and hopes to make a mint.
