This week’s theme
Words derived from body parts

This week’s words
tergiversate
loggerhead
hough
middlebrow
footloose


This week’s comments
AWADmail 1132

Next week’s theme
Words entering English in the last 30 years

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(FUUT-loos)

MEANING:

adjective: Free to go or do as one pleases without concerns or commitments.

ETYMOLOGY:

From foot, from Old English fot (foot) + loose, from Old Norse laus (loose). Earliest documented use: 1650.

NOTES:

“Footloose and fancy-free” is a common pairing. Fancy-free here means free of emotional attachment, especially of love.

USAGE:

“‘What would you rather be?’ one tug captain asked me. ‘If you had the opportunity to be a tugboat captain or a bank teller, what would you choose?’ Yet the footloose spirit that once sent sailors to sea has been slowly starched out of the business -- mostly with good reason.”
Burkhard Bilger; Towheads; The New Yorker; Apr 19, 2010.

See more usage examples of footloose in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: