Word.ws English Dictionary

footrace

footrace noun: a race run on foot.

footrace: a race run on foot
Image: dontworry, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

footrace (plural footraces)

  1. A race run on foot.

Verb

footrace (third-person singular simple present footraces, present participle footracing, simple past and past participle footraced)

  1. (intransitive) To race on foot.
    • [T]he Moslems footraced around the Kaba three times at top speed, to demonstrate to the observant Koreish that they were in excellent physical condition; […]1926, R[oy] F[loyd] Dibble, “The Triumphant Return”, in Mohammed, New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, →OCLC, section I, pages 213–214
    • As we footraced back to the fort, I saw the lieutenant standing on top the walls watching this string of grown-up children flying along the path pursued by their barking and excited dogs.1932, Richard Halliburton, “La Brave Légion”, in The Flying Carpet, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 103
  2. (transitive) To race (someone or something) on foot.
    • I could almost feel the clear spool when the game turned, headed along the beach, and I footraced him for line, and won.1920 March, R. W. Swearingen, “That Eighty-seven Pound Weakfish”, in H[enr]y S. Watson, editor, Field and Stream, 24th year, number 11, New York, N.Y.: Field and Stream Pub. Co., →ISSN, →OCLC, page...
    • Next Representative McCarthy promises to footrace a Manhattan bus to prove that transportation is snarled.1970 June 2, “Senators and Circuses”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 14 Dec 2025

Forms of footrace

Noun
pluralfootraces
Verb
third-person singular presentfootraces
present participlefootracing
past participlefootraced
pastfootraced

Origin of footrace

From foot + race.

Questions about footrace

What does footrace mean?
Footrace means a race run on foot.
What part of speech is footrace?
Footrace can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of footrace?
The plural of footrace is footraces.

Words near footrace in the dictionary

  1. footprints on the sands of time
  2. footpump
  3. footpumps
  4. footquake
  5. footquakes
  6. footrace
  7. footraced
  8. footracer
  9. footracers
  10. footraces
  11. footracing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: footrace (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-footrace.wav.

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