footbinding
footbinding noun: the old Chinese custom of binding women's feet with cloth to prevent them from growing with age.
Noun
footbinding (countable and uncountable, plural footbindings)
- The old Chinese custom of binding women's feet with cloth to prevent them from growing with age.
- More recent studies have shown that foot-binding was likely practiced not purely for the sake of marriage, but also to keep girls at home and engaged in handicrafts, such as spinning cotton, in order to contribute to their family’s income.2020 February 14, Antonia Malchik, “The Neglected Consequences of Foot-Binding”, in The Atlantic
- The material used to bind feet for this reason.
Forms of footbinding
| plural | footbindings |
|---|---|
| alternative form | foot binding |
| alternative form | foot-binding |
Origin of footbinding
From foot + binding.
Questions about footbinding
- What does footbinding mean?
- Footbinding means the old Chinese custom of binding women's feet with cloth to prevent them from growing with age.
- What part of speech is footbinding?
- Footbinding is a noun.
- What is the plural of footbinding?
- The plural of footbinding is footbindings.
Words near footbinding in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: footbinding (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “footbinding.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/footbinding. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.