Hoof

How to spell hoof

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce hoof

What does hoof mean?

1. nounThe hard, horny part of the foot of a horse, cow, deer, or similar animal.
2. verbTo go somewhere on foot, especially over a long or tiring distance (informal, usually 'hoof it').

Hoof in a sentence

• noun

  The farrier carefully trimmed each hoof before fitting the shoe.

• verb

  With no taxi in sight, they had to hoof it across town to the station.

• noun

  A stone lodged in the horse's hoof made it limp.

• verb

  Rather than wait for the late bus, she decided to hoof it home.

Where does hoof come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native Germanic word that comes down to us almost unchanged from the Old English hof, which named the hard, horny covering on the foot of a horse or similar animal. It belongs to a wide family of related words across the Germanic languages, including Old Norse hofr, Dutch hoef, and German Huf, all tracing back to a common ancestor in Proto-Germanic. The deep root may even connect to ancient Indo-European words linked to walking and stepping, which fits the idea of the part of the animal that meets the ground. Across centuries the spelling settled with the double o representing the long vowel sound, and the word stayed firmly in everyday use thanks to the central role of horses and cattle in working life. The one wrinkle for writers is the plural, which can be written either as hooves or as hoofs, but the singular itself has always been a steady, simple hoof.

How the word is built

• hoof (single root, from Old English hof: the horny foot of an animal)