Boot

How to spell boot

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce boot

What does boot mean?

1. nounA sturdy item of footwear that covers the foot and part of the leg.
2. nounThe rear storage compartment of a car, used for luggage.
3. verbTo start up a computer so that it loads its operating system.

Boot in a sentence

• noun

  She laced up her left boot before the hike.

• noun

  He loaded the suitcases into the boot of the car.

• verb

  It can take a minute for the old laptop to boot fully.

• noun

  A hole had worn through the sole of his old boot.

• noun

  The spare tyre is stored under the floor of the boot.

• verb

  Press the power button to boot the machine.

Where does boot come from?

Language of origin: French

The footwear sense of boot arrived in English around the 1300s from the Old French word bote, which simply meant a covering for the foot and lower leg. The deeper origin of that French word is uncertain, though it is often linked to a broader family of words for sturdy outer coverings. The British meaning of the luggage compartment of a car grew from an older sense in which the boot was an external compartment on a horse-drawn coach where luggage or attendants rode, itself perhaps influenced by the leather footwear sense. The computing sense is entirely separate in flavour but related in image: it is a shortening of bootstrap, from the old saying about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, describing a machine that loads its own startup program. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, its spelling rarely troubles adults, but its many distinct meanings make it a good example of how one tidy four-letter word can branch in several directions.

How the word is built

• boot (single root, no affixes; from Old French bote)