footbinding
noun
footbinding is a noun meaning “The old Chinese custom of binding women's feet with cloth to prevent them from growing with age” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-O-T-B-I-N-D-I-N-G, and it appears about once in every 79 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of footbinding is footbindings.
What does footbinding mean?
noun
- 1
The old Chinese custom of binding women's feet with cloth to prevent them from growing with age.
- 2
The material used to bind feet for this reason.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of footbinding
- footbindings plural
- foot binding
- foot-binding
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is footbinding?
Footbinding appears about once in every 79 million words in written English, the 282,993rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Footbinding in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense binding of women's feet:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | pieds bandés |
| German | Füßebinden |
| Spanish | vendado de pies, vendado podal |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does footbinding come from?
From foot + binding.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).