Footage

How to spell footage

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce footage

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does footage mean?

1. nounFilmed or recorded visual material, especially raw or unedited video.
2. nounA length or area measured in feet.

Footage in a sentence

• The security camera captured clear footage of the break-in.

• The contractor calculated the square footage of the kitchen before ordering tiles.

• The documentary opens with rare archive footage from the 1950s.

• The listing exaggerated the footage of the living space.

Where does footage come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built from the very old English noun 'foot', which traces back to Old English 'fot' and ultimately to a shared Germanic and Indo-European root meaning the part of the body used for standing and walking. The suffix '-age', borrowed into English from French (and ultimately Latin '-aticum'), forms nouns expressing a quantity, a collection, or the result of an action, as in 'mileage' and 'baggage'. Joined together, 'footage' first meant simply a length measured in feet, a sense that grew up in trades and engineering during the nineteenth century. When cinema arrived, film was wound and measured by the foot, so the length of film exposed came to be called its footage, and from there the word shifted to mean the recorded film itself. The spelling trap is the silent reminder that '-age' attaches directly to 'foot' with no doubled letter and no dropped 't', so it stays 'footage'.

How the word is built

• foot (the unit of length, also the body part)
• -age (noun suffix denoting an amount, collection, or result)