Feet

How to spell feet

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce feet

What does feet mean?

1. nounThe plural of foot: the parts of the legs below the ankles that a person stands on.
2. nounThe plural of foot used as a unit of length equal to twelve inches.

Feet in a sentence

• After the long hike her feet were sore and swollen.

• The ceiling is nine feet high in the older part of the house.

• He warmed his cold feet by the fire.

• The fence runs for almost forty feet along the boundary.

Where does feet come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the irregular plural of 'foot', which comes from the Old English fot, meaning the part of the leg below the ankle. In the Germanic languages plurals were once formed by changing the vowel inside the word rather than adding an ending, a process scholars call i-mutation, and that is exactly why fot became fet and eventually 'feet' rather than the expected 'foots'. The same vowel-swapping pattern survives in goose and geese, tooth and teeth, and man and men. The word traces back to a shared ancestral root that also gave Latin pes and Greek pous (both meaning 'foot'), which is why related borrowings like 'pedal' and 'podium' look so different yet describe the same body part. Because 'feet' sounds identical to 'feat' (an impressive achievement), the two are easily swapped in writing, even though their spellings and meanings are entirely separate.

How the word is built

• fe- (from Old English fot 'foot')
• -et (irregular i-mutation plural ending, from fet)

Words that sound like feet

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• feat: A remarkable act or achievement that demonstrates skill, strength, or courage.