foot

Your foot is the part at the end of your leg that you stand on. A cold floor first thing in the morning, sand between your toes, the shoe that starts to pinch by the afternoon.

The plural is feet, never foots. Feet are also a length — twelve inches, a little over thirty centimetres — and English keeps the singular form in front of a noun: a six-foot fence, a ten-foot ceiling, though the fence itself is six feet high. Anything with a bottom has a foot: the foot of the bed, the foot of the stairs, the foot of the page. On foot means walking, and to foot the bill is to pay it. The word is buried in dozens of phrases, from putting your foot in it to getting cold feet, so it repays learning as more than a body part.

Phrases it lives in

• on foot — walking, rather than travelling by vehicle
• put your foot in it — to say something that embarrasses or upsets people without meaning to
• get cold feet — to lose your nerve about something you had agreed to do
• find your feet — to grow comfortable in a new job or situation