footpad

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   historical: a robber who traveled and attacked people on foot rather than on horseback

   Travelers avoided the lonely road after dusk because a footpad had robbed two merchants there.

2. 2
   noun

   a padded or flattened surface that supports, protects, or forms a foot, paw, leg, or landing support

   Each leg of the machine ends in a broad footpad that spreads its weight across the floor.

Simplified etymology

Footpad, recorded from the late 17th century, is connected with the 16th-century underworld verb pad, “to tread or walk.” That verb came from Low German padden, possibly formed in imitation of the sound of footsteps.

A compound of foot + pad. The seventeenth-century robber sense contrasts a criminal traveling on foot with a mounted highwayman; pad may also have suggested a road or a person who tramped it. The support and cushioning senses are transparent later combinations of foot and pad.

Topics

External links

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