foot
/fʊt
/noun (plural feet /fiːt/)
1The lower extremity of the leg below the ankle, on which a person stands or walks.The Antipodes were the body's extremities, its feet or its finger nails....
- Loop one end of the tubing around the ball of the foot with the injured ankle.
- This slows blood circulation and causes even more fluid to build up in your feet and ankles.
Synonyms
informal tootsie, trotter
(feet) rhyming slangplates of meat
North American informal dogs
1.1A corresponding part of the leg in vertebrate animals.The floor of the print tends to be drawn upwards as the animal withdrew its foot from wet and sticky sediments....
- They have an opposable hallux on their hind feet, and their pelage is soft, thick, and wooly.
- The animal takes off with a push from its large and muscular hind limbs and lands on its hind feet and tail.
Synonyms
paw, forepaw, hind paw, hoof, trotter, pad
technical tarsus, ungula
rare slot, dewclaw
1.2The part of a sock, stocking, etc. that covers the foot.There are many different knotting styles that can be used for naalbinding, and it was used mainly to produce gloves, or the feet of socks....
- Simply knit around and around until the foot of the sock reaches two inches.
- Turn right side out and slide the shoe onto the foot of the stocking.
1.3West Indian A person’s body below the torso, including the entire leg and the foot.
1.4 [mass noun] literary A person’s manner or speed of walking or running: fleet of foot...
- However, he is armed with two things which are valued higher than anything else these days, speed of foot and a refusal to lose.
- In his position, Bergkamp has never really felt the necessity for speed of foot.
- He had never been strong, but his Nymphian heritage had blessed him with speed, as he was light and fleet of foot.
1.5 [treated as plural] British historical or formal Infantry; foot soldiers: a captain of foot
2Something resembling a foot in form or function, in particular:I really like these frames because they really show the function of the rear foot....
- He laughed richly and grinned at her, making the crow's feet at the edge of his eyes ever more present.
2.1A projecting part on which a piece of furniture or each of its legs stands.The table's feet, he added, are larger but similar to those on the museum's Cadwalader screen....
- A small ball of clay or soil, pressed around the foot of the chair, bewildered us.
2.2A device on a sewing machine for holding the material steady as it is sewn.A presser foot, for a sewing machine for use in sewing slide fasteners to garments, has a foot portion pivotally mounted on a vertically movable presser bar....
- When threading up any sewing machine make sure the foot is 'up' as this opens the tension disks and the thread goes between.
2.3 Zoology A locomotory or adhesive organ of an invertebrate.Typical symptoms include breathlessness, swollen ankles and feet, and extreme tiredness....
- This is especially common in larger spider veins around the feet and ankles.
- This uncommon lesion occurs predominantly in the small bones of the hands and feet, not the ankle.
2.4 Botany The part by which a petal is attached.The three-lobed labellum is attached to the column by a column foot, where the nectary is located.
3The lower or lowest part of something; the base or bottom: the foot of the stairs complete the form at the foot of the page...
- Tomorrow, the team will be dropped by helicopter into the jungle and must trek to their base at the foot of a volcano.
- He came on with Jessica St Rose aka Pepper Sauce, as her small but vibrant fan base rushed to the foot of the stage.
- The dive base lay at the foot of a steep boulder slope, overhung by a high, arched ceiling adorned with enormous stalactites.
Synonyms
bottom, base, toe, edge, end, lowest part, lowest point, lower limits;
foundation
3.1The end of a table that is furthest from where the host sits.Rafael starts speaking in an obscure accent as he collapses at the foot of the conference table....
- Linda sits at the foot of the dinner table and we give her scraps.
- Two elegant chair arms add comfort and make this chair ideal for the head or foot of the dining table.
3.2The end of a bed, couch, or grave where the occupant’s feet normally rest.I have got a plot reserved for myself at the foot of their graves, but I don't like the thought of them being dug up later, splitting up the family....
- I set the stone at the foot of her grave and stared at it in silence for awhile, remembering her face, voice, and actions.
- Quartz stopped at the foot of his grave, tears flowing down her cheeks.
3.3The lower edge of a sail.One must be careful not to cup the sail with too little tension on the foot of the sail by having the outhaul to loose....
- With the sail laying down, rake sail back until the foot of the sail is touching the tail of the board.
4A unit of linear measure equal to 12 inches (30.48 cm): shallow water no more than a foot deep he’s about six feet tall...
- Takeshi stood a good six feet tall for a young man of 16.
- He stood six feet tall and was covered in coarse black fur.
- The center was a large room a good five hundred feet in diameter and several stories high.
4.1 [usually as modifier] Music A unit used in describing a set of organ pipes according to its pitch, the designation being the length of one particular pipe: an 8-foot reed stop
4.2 [usually as modifier] Music A unit used in describing a set of harpsichord strings playing at the same pitch as a set of organ pipes of the same designation: the 16-foot register...
- Normally it would consist of two eight foot stops and a four foot stop.
- The largest harpsichord in the collection is described as possessing five registers and four sets of strings, one of which was probably a sixteen-foot stop.
5 Prosody A group of syllables constituting a metrical unit. In English poetry it consists of stressed and unstressed syllables, while in ancient classical poetry it consists of long and short syllables.A trochee is a metrical foot of two syllables, the first long and the second short....
- The division of a line of poetry into feet is much like the division of a musical phrase into bars.
- But she genuinely excels on those occasions when she employs a mixture of metrical feet.
verb [with object] informal
1 (foot it) Cover a distance, especially a long one, on foot: the rider was left to foot it ten or twelve miles back to camp...
- But we didn't have time to worry about that, so we got changed in the hotel's swimming pool changing rooms (!) and hot footed it to the wedding.
- ‘Yeah, let's go find a takeaway,’ agreed Ron, as they hot footed it outside.
- I carried on to the client's home and then hot footed it back home to get David.
1.1 [no object] archaic Dance: the dance of fairies, footing it to the cricket’s song
2Pay (the bill) for something, typically when the amount is considered large or unreasonable.Contrary to international law, it will be the world that foots the bill, estimated at $50-60 million....
- But isn't the public, which currently foots the bill for one third of RTE's total revenue, entitled to know exactly where their money is going?
- But, regardless of the squabbling, who foots the bill?
Synonyms
pay, pay up, pay out, pay the bill, settle up;
bail someone out
informal pick up the tab, cough up, fork out, shell out, come across, chip in
British informal stump up
North American informal ante up, pony up, pick up the check
Phrases
at someone's feet
be rushed (or run) off one's feet
feet of clay
get one's feet under the table
get one's feet wet
get (or start) off on the right (or wrong) foot
have something at one's feet
have (or keep) one's (or both) feet on the ground
have a foot in both camps
have (or get) a foot in the door
have one foot in the grave
my foot!
off one's feet
on one's feet
on (or by) foot
on the back foot
on foot of
on the front foot
put one's best foot forward
put one's feet up
put foot
put one's foot down
put one's foot in it (or put one's foot in one's mouth)
put a foot wrong
set foot on (or in)
set something on foot
sweep someone off their feet
think on one's feet
to one's feet
under one's feet
under foot
Derivatives
footless
- Are they going to breed a headless footless model?
- The client has wheeled himself uncomfortably close to me, his footless leg dressed in a brightly colored argyle sock.
- Today I was wearing a pair of black opaque footless tights.
Origin
Old English fōt, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch voet and German Fuss, from an Indo-European root shared by Sanskrit pad, pāda, Greek pous, pod-, and Latin pes, ped- 'foot'.
An Old English word that appears as far back as the epic poem Beowulf, probably written in the 700s, foot comes from an ancient root which also gives us Greek pous, the root of words as varied as antipodes, octopus, and podium (mid 18th century), and Latin pes ‘foot’ (see pawn). The measure equal to 12 inches was originally based on the length of a man's foot.
When we use feet of clay to suggest that a respected person has a fundamental flaw, we are reaching back to a story from biblical times. In the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, dreamed about a magnificent idol which had feet ‘part of iron and part of clay’, and which was broken into pieces. The prophet Daniel interpreted this to mean that the kingdom would eventually fall. To have one foot in the grave is to be near death. Although the idea dates back to the 17th century, it is now particularly associated with the 1990s British TV comedy One Foot in the Grave, starring Richard Wilson as the unlucky but defiant Victor Meldrew, who had been forced into early retirement. See also first
Rhymes
- scalding
- scaldy
- scale
- scaleability
- scaleable
- scale armour
- scale board
- scaled
- scaled-down
- scale insect
- scale leaf
- scaleless
- scalene
- scalene muscle
- scalenus
- scale of notation
- scale pan
- scaler
- scale something back/down (or up)
- scale worm
- Scalia, Antonin
- Scaliger, Joseph Justus
- Scaliger, Julius Caesar
- scaliness
- scaling ladder