Word
footed
Phoneticsfoot·ed
US/ˈfʊtɪd/
UK/fˈʊtɪd/
Definitions
01paid for something
v. paid for a bill or a cost, especially when it was expensive.
v. the past tense of 'foot', meaning to have settled a bill or covered the cost of something.
“My parents footed the bill for my entire university education.”
“The insurance company eventually footed the bill for the repairs, though only after months of legal disputes regarding the policy's fine print.”
Usage
Usually appears in the idiom 'footed the bill'.
02having specific feet
adj. having a particular kind of foot or a certain number of feet.
adj. possessing feet of a specified type or number; almost exclusively used in hyphenated compounds.
“The four-footed animal ran quickly through the tall grass.”
“The biologist studied several species of web-footed birds to understand how they had adapted to the local marshland environment.”
Usage
Typically functions as a combining form in compound adjectives like 'flat-footed' or 'sure-footed'.
03poetry rhythm
adj. having a specific number of beats or 'feet' in a line of poetry.
adj. relating to the number or type of metrical feet in a verse.
“The poem was written in six-footed lines of verse.”
“The scholar argued that the poet's use of five-footed lines created a rhythmic tension that mirrored the poem's dark themes.”
Technical · Literary
Usage
Used in the context of prosody and poetic analysis.
Synonyms
Real-World Examples
“Nmecha dragged a shot across goal to leave Kelleher flat‑footed, with Calvert‑Lewin poking into the empty net for his first of the season.” Etymology
From foot + -ed.
From Middle English foted, i-foted, equivalent to foot + -ed.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/footed