footling
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English[edit]
Etymology 1[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
Adjective[edit]
footling (comparative more footling, superlative most footling)
- trivial, silly and irritating.
- 1919, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 16, in All Roads Lead to Calvary:
- He was explaining to her things about the air service. . . . "Isn't it rather dangerous work?" she asked. She felt it was a footling question even as she asked it.
- 1922, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 7, in Right Ho, Jeeves:
- Only a couple of days ago I was compelled to take him off a case because his handling of it was so footling.
- 1948 May 24, “United Nations: Over to You”, in Time, retrieved 14 October 2013:
- For 28 footling days the 58-nation General Assembly had been debating the now-famous U.S. afterthought: to postpone partition and substitute a U.N. trusteeship for Palestine.
- 1962 December, “Letters to the Editor: Towards 75 m.p.h. expresses”, in Modern Railways, page 429:
- They are electrically hauled, and travel at over 70 m.p.h. between stops, but they make five stops at footling little country towns and take two hours for the 98-mile run.
- 2009 July 15, Carlo Rotella, “The Genre Artist”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 October 2013:
- “Why did you persist in writing hurlothrumbo romances of the footling sort favored by mooncalfs?”
Translations[edit]
Trivial; unimportant
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Verb[edit]
footling
- present participle and gerund of footle
Etymology 2[edit]
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
footling (plural footlings)
- A fetus oriented so that, at birth, its foot will emerge first. A type of breech birth.
- 2006 January 29, James McManus, “Excerpt from Physical: An American Checkup”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 October 2013:
- In 1999 my fourth child (third daughter) made an unexpected footling breech presentation.