feet

n. pl.

See Foot.

Feet
n.

[See Feat, n.]
Fact; performance. [Obs.]

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bipedalism, emerging about 3 million years ago, is considered to have been a crucial step in evolution, especially as it allowed the hand to develop into a distinct and specialized appendage. Not simply a primitive hand, the human foot is adapted to a form of bipedalism distinctive for the efficacy of its stride. Australopithecus africanus, for instance, had a fully ‘modern’ foot 2-5 million years ago, and probably walked with a stride. Unlike other primates, the human foot is not prehensile — that is, not able to grasp objects with the aid of an opposed first digit like the thumb. Though the toes of the human foot are generally not capable of independent or precise movement, the flexor muscles of the big toe are vital to our gait. The human foot is stable, yet adaptable to walking and running on rough and sloping ground. Like fingerprints, footprints are unique to each individual; thus, the footprints of infants are often recorded as part of birth records in hospitals.

Structure and movement

The feet have two distinct functions: to support the body when standing, and to act as levers when walking. For support, they need to be as rigidly flat on the ground as possible, but the bones and joints which form the skeleton of the foot have an arched form, both from front to back and from side to side, which requires strong support from fibrous ligaments and from muscular contraction to withstand the stress when it is performing as a lever.

The bones, from heel to toe, are the tarsal and metatarsal bones and the phalanges. One of the tarsal bones takes part in the ankle joint. Under this is the largest bone (calcaneum), which is cushioned by soft tissue below to form the heel; attached to it is the exceptionally thick and strong tendon of the calf muscles, which spans the back of the ankle, allowing contraction of the muscles to lift the heel. This tendon can sometimes be torn — a painful condition which seriously interferes with walking — and it is known as the Achilles tendon, from the ‘heel’ of mythological vulnerability. In front of the ankle, a prominent tendon from the shin muscles stands out when the foot is pointed upwards. Other leg muscles can tilt the foot inwards or outwards.

Movement of the whole foot at the ankle is achieved mainly by contraction of muscles in the lower leg, and the same is true of some other foot movements. Within the leg are the muscles which extend (point up) the toes — via their long tendons, which cross the front of the ankle (held close to it by fibrous bands), and reach to the small bones (phalanges) of the toes. Muscles which flex (curl down) the toes (including a separate important one for flexing the big toe) lie deep in the calf, and their tendons run behind the bony knob (malleolus) on the inner side of the ankle, and thence across the sole to reach their insertions. Behind the malleolus on the outer side, tendons from other leg muscles run in the sole to the metatarsals, such that their contraction plants the foot firmly on the ground. Attachments of tendons of leg muscles from both sides to the underside of the foot bones is important for retaining the ‘arches’. Each of these long tendons has a lubricated synovial sheath, which can become inflamed and painful in the condition of tenosynovitis.

There is also a complex set of small muscles within the foot itself, mainly in the sole, arranged in no less than four layers and protected by a very strong fibrous sheet reaching from heel to toes. These muscles can flex the toes, splay the big toe and the little toe outwards, or pull in the sides of the foot; they actively modify the foot's shape, and maintain its strength and flexibility in the face of the continually changing strains and pressures of walking and running. The foot muscles themselves assist in retaining the arches, but it is mainly a failure of the leg muscles which leads to ‘fallen arches’ or ‘flat feet’. In unusual circumstances, the remarkable achievements of some foot-painting artists show the extent to which the movements of feet and toes can sometimes be trained into hand-like precision.

The foot as a measure

The foot has been used as a standard linear measurement in various cultures. The English foot, still in use today in the US, was defined in 1959 as being 30.48 cm. The foot is also a unit of measure in poetry, indicating the smallest unit; a foot is usually defined as one stressed and one or two unstressed syllables, as in the word ‘poet’. The number of feet per line determines the metre of a poem: if a single line contains one foot, it is called monometer, two feet is diameter, three is trimeter, etc.

Religions and the feet

The washing of another's feet has long been performed as a gesture of humility in Western culture. An act of hospitality in ancient Palestine, servants or the wife of the host might wash a guest's feet. Jesus is said to have washed the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper (John 13: 1-15), and the early Christian Church introduced foot washing as a ritual (pedilavium) imitating the humility and selfless love of Jesus. Foot washing on Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before Easter, appeared as a rite in the Roman Catholic Church during the seventh century. In some European countries, the social elite would wash the feet of the poor and give them gifts on this day, a practice which continued in England until the mid eighteenth century. Many Episcopal and some other Protestant churches, for instance the Mennonites, still practice foot washing today.

The Buddha's footprints play an important role in Buddhist iconography. Emphasizing the transiency of all things, for several centuries after his death in the fifth century bc, the Buddha was represented only by his footprints. For instance, his footprints in stone can be seen at the base of the tree where he is said to have attained enlightenment.

Historian Sander Gilman has analyzed the cultural meaning of the Jewish foot, which he claims has been associated in Christian societies with the cloven hoof of the devil. During the nineteenth century, the ‘weak’ feet of the Jewish male were perceived as a sign of his unfittedness for military service, and hence his inability to participate fully in the European nation state. The Jew's feet were partially responsible for his or her allegedly idiosyncratic and heavy-footed gait. Flat-footedness in particular was believed to be a racial characteristic of Jews, and also blacks, throughout the Nazi period. Interestingly, while a sign of atavism, flat-footedness was also considered a result of ‘modern’, urban living and its unhealthy and disabling influences.

Foot-binding

Like the Jew's feet, the tiny bound feet of Chinese women have served as a complex social signifier. Though a less severe form of foot-binding is also practised by the Kutchin Indians of Alaska, the most well-known form of foot-binding first became popular among Chinese women under the T'ang dynasty in the seventh century, and continued to be practised well into the twentieth century. The goal was to achieve the look of tiny, delicate, ‘golden lily’ feet; this was accomplished by tightly binding the feet, stunting their growth and breaking the bones. Beginning as early as the age of five, cultural critic Mary Daly (1978) discusses foot-binding as a form of painful and crippling mutilation imposed on women by a deeply patriarchal society. The process is indeed extremely painful and can last for over 10 years, until the feet have stopped growing and have adopted the desired shape; Chinese women continue to bind their feet throughout their lives in order to maintain and improve their form. A sign of status and desirability in marriage, foot-binding was practised on all levels of Chinese society, including among the working class. A girl's bound feet were an indication not only of her sexual desirability, but also of her self-discipline, her ability for self-sacrifice, and the care with which she had been raised by her mother. The psychological implications of such torment being inflicted upon a young girl by her mother has been the subject of much speculation. There is a Chinese adage that a mother cannot love both her daughter and her daughter's feet at the same time. As a sex-segregated ritual, men were excluded, in theory, from knowing anything about the process or pain involved. This taboo in some ways reconciled the practice with Confusion teachings which clearly forbade self-mutilation. C. Fred Blake argues that the female mystique of foot-binding helped to exempt men from direct responsibility for dominating and degrading women.

Blake has re-examined the relationship between foot-binding and women's labour in China, and revised the traditional interpretation that foot-binding was a way in which women made themselves useless as a sign of the wealth and status of the men on whom they depended. Blake argues that foot-bound women perform all sorts of manual and menial labour, including agricultural field work and domestic service. What foot-binding does is to make women's labour less visible; the foot-bound woman only appeared ‘useless’ and helpless, while in fact her labour, both economic and reproductive, made vital contributions to the family economy and to society in general.

An imperial edict prohibiting foot-binding was issued in 1644 and remained in effect until 1911, but the practice lingered until the Great Leap Forward in 1958-60. Part of the problem was that these were political movements, propagated by men and medical professionals, while foot-binding continued to be a traditional female practice. Interestingly, in traditional Chinese culture, two types of women had natural-sized feet: uncivilized, clumsy, and crude women, and extraordinarily powerful women, like legendary female warriors, goddesses, and Guan Yin, the Buddhist redeemer of humanity.

The bound foot was highly eroticized, often compared to a ‘golden lotus’, a central symbol in Buddhism. It was not unusual for a man to have a pet name for his wife's feet. The suggestion that foot-binding was part of sexual maturity, a prelude to the trials of marriage and childbirth, is indicative of an association between the foot and the womb in Chinese culture. Sigmund Freud proposed that by maiming their own feet, Chinese women allayed the castration anxieties of men.

The Chinese are not the only culture to eroticize the foot. Ancient Egyptians decorated feet with henna, and toe rings are common in many cultures. Pedicures and all manner of products to beautify and eroticize the feet, including nail polish and various forms of foot jewellery, are widely available throughout the world today. Foot and shoe fetishes are well-known forms of ‘perversion’ in European and Asian cultures as well. Stressing that it is often not possible to trace the origins of subconscious connections, Freud mentions the foot as an age-old sexual symbol, and a frequent locus for the displacement of desire. The shoe or slipper, he notes, often operates as a symbol of the female genitalia.

— Sarah Goodfellow, Sheila Jennett

Bibliography

• C. Fred Blake, (1994). Foot-binding in Neo-Confucian China and the appropriation of female labor. Signs, 19(3), 676-712.
• Sander Gilman, S. (1991). The Jewish Foot. The Jew's Body. Routledge, New York

See also ankle; skeleton; walking.

Idioms beginning with feet:
feet on the ground
feet of clay

See also at someone's feet; both feet on the ground; dead on one's feet; don't let the grass grow under one's feet; drag one's feet; fall on one's feet; get one's feet wet; get the lead out of (one's feet); get to one's feet; have two left feet; hold someone's feet to the fire; off one's feet; on one's feet; put one's feet up; rush off one's feet; shake the dust from one's feet; six feet under; stand on one's feet; take the load off (one's feet); think on one's feet; under one's feet; vote with one's feet. Also see under foot.

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English lore is apparently much less concerned with feet than its Scots, Irish, and Manx neighbours. The only belief which has predominately English examples is that if your sole itches or tickles you will tread strange ground. This is reported first in 1755, and was still current at least in the 1950s, and is one of the many beliefs concerned with itching parts of the body. A notion reported in 1878 (N&Q 5s:9 (1878), 286, 476) is that where two toes are partially joined, called ‘twin toes’ they are reputed to be lucky, although it is not stated how this luck will be manifested. It is also said that all important journeys should start on the right foot, and many accounts of the custom of first footing at New Year stipulate that the first-footer should not be flatfooted.

See also SHOESOpie and Tatem. 1989: 165-7; Roud, 2003: 181-3.

IN BRIEF: The end parts of the legs below the ankles.

With both feet on the ground you won't get far. — Loesje International, founded in Holland in 1983.

Tutor's tip: The high jumper does not consider jumping 7 feet (the plural of foot) a great track and field feat (a special accomplishment).

Dansk (Danish)
n. - fødder, fod

idioms:

• at one's feet    ved ens fødder, lige for
• be on one's feet    være på benene
• both feet on the ground    begge ben på jorden
• cold feet    kolde fødder
• feet of clay    lerfødder
• get to one's feet    komme på benene
• get under someone's feet    komme i krammet på nogen
• keep one's feet    holde balancen
• put one's feet up    smække benene op, hvile sig
• stand on one's own two feet    stå på egne ben

Nederlands (Dutch)
voeten

Français (French)
n. - pieds (plur)

idioms:

• at someone's feet    (fig) (être) le disciple de qn
• both feet on the ground    (avoir) les pieds sur terre
• feet of clay    pieds d'argile
• get one's feet under the table    (fig) mettre les pieds sous la table
• get to one's feet    retomber sur ses pieds
• get under someone's feet    être dans les pattes de qn (fam)
• keep one's feet    avoir les pieds sur terre
• off one's feet    tomber, déstabiliser, ne pas tenir debout
• on one's feet    (se mettre) debout, se lever, (être) debout
• put one's feet up    se reposer, surélever les pieds
• stand on one's own two feet    avoir les pieds sur terre

Deutsch (German)
n. - Füße

idioms:

• at someone's feet    zu jmds. Füßen
• both feet on the ground    beide Beine auf der Erde
• feet of clay    eine Schwachstelle
• get one's feet under the table    die Beine unter den Tisch stecken (ugs)
• get to one's feet    sich erheben, aufstehen
• get under someone's feet    vor die Füße laufen
• keep one's feet    nicht hinfallen
• off one's feet    jmdm. den Kopf verdrehen (ugs)
• on one's feet    auf den Beinen sein
• put one's feet up    die Beine hochlegen
• stand on one's own two feet    auf den eigenen Füßen stehen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. pl. - πόδια, (γεωγρ.) πρόποδες

idioms:

• at one's feet    στα πόδια κάποιου, (μτφ.) στο έλεος κάποιου
• be on one's feet    είμαι στο πόδι
• both feet on the ground    προσγειωμένος
• cold feet    φόβος, τρακ
• fall on one's feet    (καθομ.) πέφτω στα μαλακά, τη βγάζω καθαρή
• feet of clay    πήλινα πόδια
• get to one's feet    στέκομαι στα πόδια μου
• get under someone's feet    εμποδίζω όντας στη μέση
• keep one's feet    (καθομ.) αντέχω, κρατιέμαι όρθιος
• put one's feet up    (καθομ.) ξεκουράζομαι
• stand on one's own two feet    στέκομαι στα πόδια μου, ορθοποδίζω

Italiano (Italian)
plurale di "foot", piedi

idioms:

• at one's feet    ai piedi di qualcuno
• be on one's feet    stare in piedi
• both feet on the ground    solidamente
• cold feet    paura
• feet of clay    piedi di argilla
• get under someone's feet    mettersi tra i piedi di
• keep one's feet    tirare dritto
• put one's feet up    rilassarsi
• stand on one's own two feet    cavarsela da solo

Português (Portuguese)
n. pl. - pés (m pl)

idioms:

• at one's feet    aos pés de alguém
• be on one's feet    estar de pé
• both feet on the ground    ter os pés no chão (ser realista)
• cold feet    acovardar-se
• feet of clay    fraquezas (f pl) escondidas (de princípios)
• get to one's feet    levantar-se
• get under someone's feet    atrapalhar (estar no caminho de alguém)
• keep one's feet    manter-se em pé
• put one's feet up    colocar os pés para cima
• stand on one's own two feet    ser independente

Русский (Russian)
ноги

idioms:

• at one's feet    быть у чьих-либо ног
• be on one's feet    встать на ноги, прочно держаться, быть независимым
• both feet on the ground    крепко стоять на ногах, быть реалистом
• cold feet    струсить
• feet of clay    на глиняных ногах
• get to one's feet    подняться на ноги
• get under someone's feet    вертеться под ногами
• keep one's feet    не теряться, не упасть
• put one's feet up    отдохнуть
• stand on one's own two feet    быть независимым

Español (Spanish)
n. - pies

idioms:

• at someone's feet    a los pies de uno
• both feet on the ground    ser realista, tener los pies sobre la tierra
• feet of clay    tener un defecto oculto
• get one's feet under the table    afianzarse en una nueva posición
• get to one's feet    ponerse de pie
• get under someone's feet    andar estorbando
• keep one's feet    permanecer en control de una situación determinada
• off one's feet    no poder mantenerse de pie
• on one's feet    restablecerse, estar de pie, recuperarse después de una enfermedad
• put one's feet up    descansar
• stand on one's own two feet    valerse por sí mismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. pl. - fötter

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
脚, 韵脚, 尺

idioms:

• at one's feet    在某人的支配下
• be on one's feet    站立着
• both feet on the ground    稳重的人, 脚踏实地
• cold feet    发慌, 胆小, 害怕, 退缩
• feet of clay    心理虚弱, 泥足, 根本的弱点, 致命的弱点
• get to one's feet    站起来
• get under someone's feet    阻碍着某人
• keep one's feet    站住脚跟
• put one's feet up    搁起腿休息
• stand on one's own two feet    独立自主

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 腳, 韻腳, 尺

idioms:

• at one's feet    在某人的支配下
• be on one's feet    站立著
• both feet on the ground    穩重的人, 腳踏實地
• cold feet    發慌, 膽小, 害怕, 退縮
• feet of clay    心理虛弱, 泥足, 根本的弱點, 致命的弱點
• get to one's feet    站起來
• get under someone's feet    阻礙著某人
• keep one's feet    站住腳跟
• put one's feet up    擱起腿休息
• stand on one's own two feet    獨立自主

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 발의 복수형

idioms:

• at one's feet    발 밑에, 복종하여
• be on one's feet    일어서다
• get to one's feet    참가하다, 시작하다
• get under someone's feet    복종하다
• keep one's feet    똑바로 서 있다, 신중히 행동하다
• put one's feet up    (의자에 앉아) 발을 높이하여 쉬다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ふもと, フィート, 足, 最下部, 足部

idioms:

• at one's feet    人の足下に, 人に服従して
• be on one's feet    立って, 独立して, 元気になって
• crow's feet    星状腐食
• feet of clay    隠れた欠点
• get to one's feet    足がかりを得る
• put one's feet up    ひと休みする

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الجمع) أقدام يزعج شخصا ما‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮רגליים‬

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feet	On Your Feet Nikki
On Your Feet Shoes	happy feet