footling
/ˈfuːt.lɪŋ/adjective, noun, verb
footling is an adjective meaning “trivial, silly and irritating” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-O-O-T-L-I-N-G and has 2 syllables, and it appears about once in every 41 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data).
What does footling mean?
adjective
- 1
trivial, silly and irritating.
noun
- 1
A fetus oriented so that, at birth, its foot or feet will emerge first. A type of breech birth.
verb
- 1
present participle and gerund of footle
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce footling?
- UK /ˈfuːt.lɪŋ/
As a noun (“A fetus oriented so that, at birth, its foot or feet will…”): /ˈfʊt.lɪŋ/.
Footling has 2 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-footling_1.wav, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-footling_2.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of footling
- more footling comparative
- most footling superlative
- footlings plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is footling?
Footling appears about once in every 41 million words in written English, the 196,618th 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).
Where does footling come from?
From footle + -ing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).