Bootstrapping

In general, bootstrapping usually refers to a self-starting process that is supposed to continue or grow without external input. Many analytical techniques are often called bootstrap methods in reference to their self-starting or self-supporting implementation, such as bootstrapping in statistics, in finance, or in linguistics.

Etymology

Tall boots may have a tab, loop or handle at the top known as a bootstrap, allowing one to use fingers or a boot hook tool to help pull the boots on. The saying "pull oneself up by one's bootstraps" was already in use during the 19th century as an example of an impossible task. The idiom dates at least to 1834, when it appeared in the Workingman's Advocate: "It is conjectured that Mr. Murphee will now be enabled to hand himself over the Cumberland river or a barn yard fence by the straps of his boots." In 1860 it appeared in a comment about philosophy of mind: "The attempt of the mind to analyze itself [is] an effort analogous to one who would lift himself by his own bootstraps." Bootstrap as a metaphor, meaning to better oneself by one's own unaided efforts, was in use in 1922. This metaphor spawned additional metaphors for a series of self-sustaining processes that proceed without external help.

The term is sometimes attributed to a story in Rudolf Erich Raspe's The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but in that story Baron Munchausen pulls himself (and his horse) out of a swamp by his hair (specifically, his pigtail), not by his bootstraps – and no explicit reference to bootstraps has been found elsewhere in the various versions of the Munchausen tales.

Originally meant to attempt something ludicrously far-fetched or even impossible, the phrase "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" has since been utilized as a narrative for economic mobility or a cure for depression. That idea is believed to have been popularized by American writer Horatio Alger in the 19th century.