Editing Foot (section)

==Metaphorical and cultural usage==
[[File:Study of a pair of feet crossed at the ankles RMG PY5986.tiff|thumb|Study of a pair of feet crossed, 1847, by Margaret Louisa Herschel, daughter of [[John Herschel]], from the [[Royal Museums Greenwich]]]]
The word "foot" is used to refer to a "...linear measure was in Old English (the exact length has varied over time), this being considered the length of a man's foot; a unit of measure used widely and anciently. In this sense the plural is often foot. The current inch and foot are implied from measurements in 12c."<ref name="auto"/>
The word "foot" also has a musical meaning; a "...metrical foot (late Old English, translating Latin pes, Greek pous in the same sense) is commonly taken to represent one rise and one fall of a foot: keeping time according to some, dancing according to others."<ref name="auto"/>

The word "foot" was used in Middle English to mean "a person" (c. 1200).<ref name="auto"/>
The expression "...to put one's best foot foremost first recorded 1849 (Shakespeare has the better foot before, 1596)".<ref name="auto"/> The expression to "...put one's foot in (one's) mouth "say something stupid" was first used in 1942.<ref name="auto"/> The expression "put (one's) foot in something" meaning to "make a mess of it" was used in 1823.<ref name="auto"/>

The word "footloose" was first used in the 1690s, meaning "free to move the feet, unshackled"; the figurative sense of "free to act as one pleases" was first used in 1873.<ref name="auto"/> Like "footloose", "flat-footed" at first had its obvious literal meaning (in 1600, it meant "with flat feet") but by 1912 it meant "unprepared" (U.S. baseball slang).<ref name="auto"/>