foot

\ \ [OE] Foot traces its ancestry back to Indo- European *pōd-, *ped-, which provided the word for ‘foot’ in most modern Indo-European languages (the exceptions are the Slavic languages, whose ‘foot’ – words, such as Russian noga and Czech noha, come from a source that meant ‘claw’, and the Celtic languages – such as Welsh troed and Irish troigh). Descendants include Greek poús ‘foot’ (whence English antipodes, pew, podium [18], and tripod, literally ‘three-footed’, a formation mirrored exactly by Latin trivet [15] and Hindi teapoy [19]), Persian pāē or pay (whence English pyjama), Sanskrit pádas ‘foot’ (source of pie ‘unit of Indian currency’), and Lithuanian pedà ‘footstep’, but the most fruitful of all from the point of view of the English lexicon has been Latin pēs, source of impede, pawn ‘chess piece’, pedal, pedestal, pedestrian, pedicure, pedigree, pedometer, peon, pioneer, quadruped, vamp, and velocipede (it also, of course, gave French pied, Italian piede, and Spanish pie). Its Germanic descendant was *fōr-, which produced German fuss, Dutch voet, Swedish fot, Danish fod, and English foot. Other related forms in English include pilot and trapeze.

\ \ Cf.⇒ ANTIPODES, IMPEDE, PAWN, PEDAL, PEDESTAL, PEDESTRIAN, PEDIGREE, PILOT, PIONEER, PODIUM, PYJAMAS, QUADRUPED, TRAPEZE, TRIPOD, VAMP