Other forms: soles
The sole is the flat underside of your foot, the part that meets the floor. Sand stuck to your soles at the beach; a small stone pressing into the sole of your foot all afternoon.
The bottom of a shoe is a sole too: rubber soles, leather soles, a sole worn thin under the heel. A different sole is an adjective meaning only — the sole survivor, the sole reason, sole responsibility, a sole trader who runs a business with nobody else in it. Solely is its adverb. And a sole is a flat fish that lies on the seabed, sold as Dover sole in restaurants. Careful with the sound: sole and soul are said exactly alike, so the sentence around them does all the work.
1nounsoleThe flat underside of a foot.~2%
“The soles of his feet were black from walking barefoot.”
2nounbottomThe bottom part of a shoe.~4%
“The sole had come away from the boot at the toe.”
3adjectivesingleOnly; single.~91%
“She was the sole survivor of the crash.”
synonyms: only, single, exclusive
4nounseaA flat sea fish eaten as food.~3%
“He ordered grilled sole and a glass of white wine.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 28 sentences found in the wild and placed 27 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
sole is the underside of a foot or shoe.
The sole that means only comes from Latin sōlus, alone or solitary, through Old French sol into Middle English — the same Latin word behind solo and solitary. Further back it reaches an Indo-European root meaning self or one's own, which is where the loneliness in it comes from. The sole of a foot is a separate word that arrived at the same three letters.
Proto-Indo-European
*swé
Latin
sōlus — alone, single, solitary, lonely
Old French
sol
Middle English
sole
English, today
sole
Built from
From Middle English sole, soule, from Old French sol, soul (“alone”), from Latin sōlus (“alone, single, solitary, lonely”). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European swé. Perhaps related to Old Latin sollus (“whole, complete”), from solh₂-. More at save*.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA