foot
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A biological structure found in many animals that is used for locomotion and that is often a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
fuutIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈfʊt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
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.
anatomy
Specifically, a human foot, which is found below the ankle and is used for standing and walking.
anatomy
The part of the leg of a human being below the ankle joint
The base or bottom of anything.
Travel by walking
A short foot-like projection on the bottom of an object to support it.
verb
To tread to measure of music; to dance; to trip; to skip.
To walk.
Add a column of numbers
To sum up, as the numbers in a column; sometimes with up.
transitive
To pay (a bill).
irelandtransitive
To spread out and stack up (turf sods) to allow them to dry.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: 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.
Used this way, foot is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a scientific use: it names something precisely within a field of study, so it appears in research and teaching more than in conversation.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Science
- Academic writing
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use foot
- “Curled up on the foot of the bed.”noun
- “One foot of the chair was on the carpet.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
The height or length of something in feet.
Status with respect to the relations between people or groups.
Having feet.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A ruler one foot long.
Contagious degenerative infection of the feet of hoofed animals (especially cattle and sheep).
A race run on foot.
A unit of work equal to a force of one poundal moving through a distance of one foot.
A unit of work equal to a force of one pound moving through a distance of one foot.
A lever that is operated with the foot.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
A mark of a foot or shoe on a surface.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: 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
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.