Other forms: footpads
A footpad is a robber on foot who attacks travellers. Set upon by footpads, a lurking footpad, footpads on the heath.
The distinction from a highwayman was social as well as practical: the highwayman rode and had a certain glamour, the footpad walked and had none. The word belongs to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The pad here is an old slang word for a road.
1nounfootpadA robber on foot who attacks travellers.
“Travellers crossing the heath at night feared being robbed by footpads.”
footpad is a robber.
Foot plus pad, an old slang word for a road. A footpad robbed on foot where a highwayman rode.
From foot + pad.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA