footling
/ˈfuːt.lɪŋ/
footling adjective: trivial, silly and irritating. Also the present participle and gerund of footle.
Adjective
footling (comparative more footling, superlative most footling)
- trivial, silly and irritating.
- 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.1919, Jerome K. Jerome, chapter 16, in All Roads Lead to Calvary
- Only a couple of days ago I was compelled to take him off a case because his handling of it was so footling.1922, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 7, in Right Ho, Jeeves
Noun
UK/ˈfʊt.lɪŋ/
footling (plural footlings)
- A fetus oriented so that, at birth, its foot or feet will emerge first. A type of breech birth.
- In 1999 my fourth child (third daughter) made an unexpected footling breech presentation.2006 January 29, James McManus, “Excerpt from Physical: An American Checkup”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 Oct 2013
Also used as
footling is also the present participle and gerund of footle.
Examples of footling in a sentence
- 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.1948 May 24, “United Nations: Over to You”, in Time, retrieved 14 Oct 2013:
- 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.1962 December, “Letters to the Editor: Towards 75 m.p.h. expresses”, in Modern Railways, page 429:
- “Why did you persist in writing hurlothrumbo romances of the footling sort favored by mooncalfs?”2009 July 15, Carlo Rotella, “The Genre Artist”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 Oct 2013:
Forms of footling
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more footling |
| superlative | most footling |
| Noun | |
| plural | footlings |
Origin of footling
From footle + -ing.
From foot + -ling.
Phrases with footling
Questions about footling
- What does footling mean?
- Footling means trivial, silly and irritating.
- How do you use footling in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is footling?
- Footling can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce footling?
- Footling is pronounced /ˈfuːt.lɪŋ/ (UK).
Words near footling in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: footling (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-footling 1.wav.
Cite this entry: “footling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/footling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.