Other forms: footprints
A footprint is the mark a foot leaves in soft ground. Follow the footprints, a fossil footprint, footprints in the snow.
Fossil ones tell you what a dinosaur did rather than what it looked like — speed, gait, whether it moved in groups — which bones cannot. A carbon footprint is the total emissions a person or thing causes, and the phrase was popularised by an oil company.
1nounfootprintThe mark a foot leaves in soft ground.
“We followed the fresh footprints in the snow to the back door.”
footprint is a mark.
Foot plus print, from Latin premere, to press.
From foot + print.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA