Dictionaries › English

foot

Pronunciation: /fʊt/

The English word “foot” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A biological structure found in many animals that is used for locomotion and that is frequently a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg.
  2. Specifically, a human foot, which is found below the ankle and is used for standing and walking.
  3. Travel by walking.
  4. The base or bottom of anything.
  5. The part of a flat surface on which the feet customarily rest.
  6. The end of a rectangular table opposite the head.
  7. A short foot-like projection on the bottom of an object to support it.
  8. A unit of measure equal to twelve inches or one third of a yard, equal to exactly 30.48 centimetres.
  9. A unit of measure for organ pipes equal to the wavelength of two octaves above middle C, approximately 328 mm.
  10. Foot soldiers; infantry.
  11. The end of a cigar which is lit, and usually cut before lighting.
  12. The part of a sewing machine which presses downward on the fabric, and may also serve to move it forward.
  13. The bottommost part of a typed or printed page.
  14. The base of a piece of type, forming the sides of the groove.
  15. The basic measure of rhythm in a poem.
  16. The parsing of syllables into prosodic constituents, which are used to determine the placement of stress in languages along with the notions of constituent heads.
  17. The bottom edge of a sail.
  18. The end of a billiard or pool table behind the foot point where the balls are racked.
  19. In a bryophyte, that portion of a sporophyte which remains embedded within and attached to the parent gametophyte plant.
  20. The muscular part of a bivalve mollusc or a gastropod by which it moves or holds its position on a surface.

Etymology

From Middle English fot, fote, foot, from Old English fōt, from Proto-West Germanic *fōt, from Proto-Germanic *fōts, from Proto-Indo-European *pṓds. Doublet of pes, pie (“Spanish unit of length”), and pous. Cognates *Scots fit (“foot”) *Yola voote (“foot”) *North Frisian fut, fötj (“foot”) *Saterland Frisian Fout (“foot”) *West Frisian foet (“foot”) *Cimbrian buus, vuaz, vuus (“foot”) *Dutch voet…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “foot” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.