foot
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "foot", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "foot" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "foot" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
foot is aEnglishnoun. It means: 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. Pronounced /fʊt/. It ranks #1,426 in English word frequency. Often confused with for and fox.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | foot |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /fʊt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,426 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for foot is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /fʊt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,426 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 26 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for foot, with forms such as "ffoot", "foott", and "fot". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "for", "fox", "fro", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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”) … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is foot, spelled F-O-O-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A 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.
- 2Specifically, a human foot, which is found below the ankle and is used for standing and walking.
- 3Travel by walking.
- 4The base or bottom of anything.
- 5The part of a flat surface on which the feet customarily rest.
- 6The end of a rectangular table opposite the head.
- 7A short foot-like projection on the bottom of an object to support it.
- 8A unit of measure equal to twelve inches or one third of a yard, equal to exactly 30.48 centimetres.
- 9A unit of measure equal to twelve inches or one third of a yard, equal to exactly 30.48 centimetres.
- 10A unit of measure equal to twelve inches or one third of a yard, equal to exactly 30.48 centimetres.
- 11A unit of measure for organ pipes equal to the wavelength of two octaves above middle C, approximately 328 mm.
- 12Foot soldiers; infantry.
- 13The end of a cigar which is lit, and usually cut before lighting.
- 14The part of a sewing machine which presses downward on the fabric, and may also serve to move it forward.
- 15The bottommost part of a typed or printed page.
- 16The base of a piece of type, forming the sides of the groove.
- 17The basic measure of rhythm in a poem.
- 18The parsing of syllables into prosodic constituents, which are used to determine the placement of stress in languages along with the notions of constituent heads.
- 19The bottom edge of a sail.
- 20The end of a billiard or pool table behind the foot point where the balls are racked.
- 21In a bryophyte, that portion of a sporophyte which remains embedded within and attached to the parent gametophyte plant.
- 22The muscular part of a bivalve mollusc or a gastropod by which it moves or holds its position on a surface.
- 23The globular lower domain of a protein.
- 24The point of intersection of one line with another that is perpendicular to it.
- 25Fundamental principle; basis; plan.
- 26Recognized condition; rank; footing.
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 (“foot”) *Dutch Low Saxon voot (“foot”) *German Fuß, Fuss (“foot”) *German Low German Faut, Foot (“foot”) *Gottscheerish vúəs (“foot”) *Luxembourgish Fouss (“foot”) *Mòcheno vuas (“foot”) *Vilamovian füs (“foot”) *Yiddish פֿוס (fus, “foot”) *Danish fod (“foot”) *Faroese, Icelandic fótur (“foot”) *Jamtish fót (“foot”) *Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Swedish fot (“foot”) *Gothic 𐍆𐍉𐍄𐌿𐍃 (fōtus, “foot”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ffoot,foott,fot,foto,ofot
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for foot
Misspelling Variants of "foot"
Frequency rank: #1,426 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter F in our English index: