Word.ws English Dictionary

footpad

footpad noun: the soft underside of an animal's paw.

Noun

footpad (plural footpads)

  1. The soft underside of an animal's paw.
  2. A medicated bandage for the treatment of corns and warts.
  3. (archaic) A thief on foot who robs travellers on the road.
    • The fraudulent clerk and the flash "cracksman" interchanged experiences. The smuggler's stories of lucky ventures and successful runs were capped by the footpad’s reminiscences of foggy nights and stolen watches.1874, Marcus Clarke, “chapter V”, in For the Term of His Natural Life
    • Col. Isaac Trumbo, who made a fortune in Utah and lost it in San Francisco, died here to-day of injuries received last Saturday night, when he was beaten by footpads.1912, The New York Times
  4. (Australia) An unmade, minor walking trail formed only by foot traffic.
    • Nemarluck, if wounded in the way described by the aborigines at Talc Head, will keep to the beaten footpad leading from Delissaville to the Finnis River, and in his weakened state, will not camp any night far from a waterhole or without a fire.1933 October 26, “Nemarluck badly wounded”, in Western Mail, Perth, W.A.: National Library of Australia, retrieved 23 Feb 2013, page 31
    • The rough dray track that leads to the south-cast soon becomes a poorly defined footpad which follows the tortuous pattern of the main spur through to Mount Everard, and then away to east and south to the far corner of the forest.1950 December 22, “Bush tracks for motorists”, in The Argus (The Argus Week-end Magazine), Melbourne, Vic.: National Library of Australia, retrieved 23 Feb 2013, page 29

Verb

footpad (third-person singular simple present footpads, present participle footpadding, simple past and past participle footpadded)

  1. (archaic) To rob travellers on the road.
    • When Mr. Kaiser was footpadded last December, the scare seemed to penetrate even the quiet town of Berkeley.1894, The Blue and Gold - Volume 21, page 172
    • Before that 'e footpadded round Covent Garden with a crew o' other masterless soldiers an' suchlike, calling 'imself "Captain Gun", as nasty a bill o' goods as ever slit your pocket or cut your throat,' Pope added, with loathing for the many thousands of defeated men who had limped home to live off...1988, Michael Talbot, To the ends of the earth, page 15
  2. To sneak on foot.
    • But the joke is on me, for they unmasked me by footpadding me to the alley and stealing my clothes and shoes.1926, Charles Leroy Edson, "The Great American Ass": An Autobiography, page 313
    • My dreams are secret, footpadding through darkness for fear the day arrest them.1974, Brian Jones, For mad Mary: poems, page 13

Examples of footpad in a sentence

  • He would lend it to get rid of Podson: the price of three weeks' food money extorted from him by a footpad.1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 71:
  • The pliant but resolute stuff our grandfathers utilised to keep out wind, weather and footpads on the Great North Road or the Gundagai Track, according to whether you are Third or Fourth G.A.1954 October 11, “Advertising”, in The Sydney Morning Herald, N.S.W.: National Library of Australia, retrieved 28 Feb 2013, page 5:
  • It suddenly occurred to me this was my mother of about two hundred years ago in England, and that I was her footpad son, returning from gaol to haunt her honest labors in the hashery.1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC:
  • “The thief-catcher always sought out the cutpurses and burglars and footpads in a town; he claimed they knew more of what was really going on then any official."1993, Robert Jordan, “Chapter 16: An Unexpected Offer”, in The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time; 5), New York: Tor Books, published 1994...

Forms of footpad

Noun
pluralfootpads
alternative formfoot-pad
alternative formfoot pad
Verb
third-person singular presentfootpads
present participlefootpadding
past participlefootpadded
pastfootpadded

Origin of footpad

From foot + pad.

Words formed from footpad

Questions about footpad

What does footpad mean?
Footpad means the soft underside of an animal's paw.
How do you use footpad in a sentence?
He would lend it to get rid of Podson: the price of three weeks' food money extorted from him by a footpad.
What part of speech is footpad?
Footpad can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of footpad?
The plural of footpad is footpads.

Words near footpad in the dictionary

  1. footnoters
  2. footnotes
  3. footnoting
  4. footpace
  5. footpaces
  6. footpad
  7. footpadded
  8. footpaddery
  9. footpadding
  10. footpaddings
  11. footpadism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: footpad (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: EN-AU ck1 footpad.ogg.

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