Footwear

How to spell footwear

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce footwear

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does footwear mean?

1. nounItems worn on the feet, such as shoes, boots, sandals, or slippers.

Footwear in a sentence

• The shop sells footwear for hiking, running, and formal events.

• Comfortable footwear is essential for a long day on your feet.

Where does footwear come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent native English compound built from two Old English words. The first part, 'foot', descends from Old English 'fot', meaning the end part of the leg on which one stands, a word shared right across the Germanic family and ultimately rooted in an ancient term for the foot that also gave Latin 'pes' and Greek 'pous'. The second part, 'wear', comes from Old English 'werian', meaning to clothe or to carry on the body, the same verb behind 'underwear' and 'menswear'. Joined together, the compound simply names everything worn on the feet, and although the idea is old, 'footwear' as a single fixed word is a relatively modern coinage that became common in the commercial language of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Because both halves are everyday words, the spelling is regular and the only thing to watch is keeping it as one solid word.

How the word is built

• foot (the body part)
• wear (clothing/things worn)