Word.ws English Dictionary

footly

footly adjective: of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the foot or feet.

Adjective

footly (not comparable)

  1. Of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the foot or feet.
    • It has been officially confirmed that this refers to the four-legged variety and is in no way connected with any footly revival of Aneurin Bevan's previous detection about the place of two-legged dextral vermin.1971 June 3, New Scientist
  2. (nonce-word) Pedestrian; on foot.
    • All footly were the Illiterates, […]1906, The Strand Magazine

Adverb

footly (not comparable)

  1. In a footly manner; by foot.
    • Oh! foot it featly, and feat it footly, and dance and sing, and tootle-ty ting!"1902, Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards, Captain January

Origin of footly

From Middle English *fotlich, from Old English fōtlīċ (“on foot, pedestrian”), equivalent to foot + -ly.

Questions about footly

What does footly mean?
Footly means of, pertaining to, or characteristic of the foot or feet.
What part of speech is footly?
Footly can be an adjective or an adverb.

Words near footly in the dictionary

  1. footlongs
  2. footloose
  3. footloose and fancy free
  4. footloose and fancy-free
  5. footlooseness
  6. footly
  7. footmaker
  8. footmakers
  9. footman
  10. footman moth
  11. footman moths

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: footly (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.

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Cite this entry: “footly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/footly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.