underfoot

English

Etymology

From Middle English underfoote, underfote, equivalent to under- +‎ foot. Cognate with Middle Dutch ondervoet (“underfoot”). Compare also Middle Low German undervôt (“pedestal, base”).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ʌndɚˈfʊt/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ʌndəˈfʊt/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

Adjective

underfoot (not comparable)

1. Situated under one's foot or feet.
2. In the way; placed so as to obstruct or hinder.
   • 2006, Whitney Balliett, American Singers: Twenty-Seven Portraits in Song, page 199:

     We'd go to the Downbeat Club, on Fifty-second Street, and I'd be so underfoot that Billie couldn't miss me.

   • 2013, Rick and Morty: Pilot:

     You ask a lot of questions, Morty. Not very charismatic. It makes you kind of an [belch] under [belch] underfoot figure.

3. Downtrodden; abject.

Adverb

underfoot (not comparable)

1. Under one's foot or feet.

   The workers were all big, burly, hard-hearted men, tromping through the marsh in their heavy boots without sparing so much as a single thought for the masses of tiny frogs they crushed underfoot.

   • 1895, S. R. Crockett, A Cry Across the Black Water:

     The green turf was velvet underfoot.

   • 1960 August, R. K. Evans, “Railway Modernisation in Spain”, in Trains Illustrated, page 494:

     With 3,600 h.p. underfoot, acceleration was reasonably brisk, but the flickering wheel-slip indicator light showed the prudence of not putting full power through the traction motors while there were traces of early-morning dampness on the rails.

2. In the way; situated so as to obstruct or hinder.

   It would be easier to do a big project like that someday when we don't have a bunch of newcomers underfoot.

   • 1978, Tom Reamy, Blind Voices:

     If you're not going to help, at least get out from underfoot.

Translations

under one's feet

• Bulgarian: под краката (pod krakata)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 在腳下／在脚下 (zh) (zài jiǎoxià)

• Finnish: jalkojen alla
• French: sous les pieds
• German: unter den Füßen (location), unter die Füße (direction)
• Hungarian: útban
• Japanese: 足元に (ja) (あしもとに, ashimoto ni)
• Manx: fo chosh
• Polish: pod nogami (location), pod nogi (direction)
• Russian: под нога́ми (pod nogámi) (location), под но́ги (pod nógi) (direction)

in the way — see in the way

Noun

underfoot (plural underfoots)

1. A storage compartment that sits below the deck of a boat.
   • 1957, Report on an Experiment Into the Freezing of Fish at Sea, page 30:

     In the early stages of fishing, storage space for wet fish was extremely limited, as three pounds on either side, and most of the staging and underfoots, contained ice, leaving only two empty pounds for stowage.

   • 1970, Torry Advisory Note - Issues 43-69, page 5:

     All too often saithe are put away with an inadequate amount of ice on them, or stowed in deep shelves or underfoots, where they become badly squashed and spoil more rapidly.

   • 1999, Ernest Shackleton, South: The Endurance Expedition to Antarctica, →ISBN, page 283:

     Progress was very slow owing to heavy floes and deep underfoots, which necessitated frequent stoppages of the engines.

Verb

underfoot (third-person singular simple present underfoots, present participle underfooting, simple past and past participle underfooted)

1. (transitive) To provide a footing beneath; to shore up or underpin.
   • 1856, The Scottish Jurist:

     A builder was employed to underfoot a tenement, but the work having been improperly executed, damage was caused to adjoining houses.

   • 1870, Cases Decided in the Court of Session, Teind Court, Etc.:

     The two courses which were open to them were, — on the one hand, to underfoot the building ; and, on the other, to take it down, with the view of its being re-erected on the same site, or elsewhere ; if they should have the means of doing so.

   • 1904, Sir John Rankine, The Scots Revised Reports, page 774:

     The result was to bring out the fact, which is now established beyond all doubt by the proof, that any attempt to underfoot the steeple would have been an entire mistake.

2. (accounting) To assign a column summary that is less than the sum of all the entries in that column.
   • 1932, Frank Hatch Streightoff, Advanced Accounting, page 140:

     Another device is to underfoot the accounts receivable column and the net cash column in the record of cash receipts and to underfoot the debit or overfoot the credit side of one or more accounts in the customer's ledger by equal amounts.

   • 1980, The CPA Journal - Volume 50:

     Stay away from the client or taxpayer who conceals, pads, overstates or understates, alters, duplicates, overfoots or underfoots, diverts, manipulates, omits, falsifies and flagrantly disregards the IRS regulations.

   • 1983, Accounting and information systems: instructor's manual, →ISBN, page 258:

     In manually balancing the cash receipts journal prior to posting to the ledgers, it is quite possible to underfoot or overfoot columns deliberately in order to manipulate the account records to cover cash shortages.

References

• “underfoot”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.