Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use underfoot in a sentence

32 example sentences · adjective, adverb, noun

Underfoot means situated under one's foot or feet. Example: “It would be easier to do a big project like that someday when we don't have a bunch of newcomers underfoot.”

Examples of underfoot by meaning

adjectiveIn the way; placed so as to obstruct or hinder.

  • We'd go to the Downbeat Club, on Fifty-second Street, and I'd be so underfoot that Billie couldn't miss me.2006, Whitney Balliett, American Singers: Twenty-Seven Portraits in Song, page 199

adverbUnder one's foot or feet.

  • The workers were all big, burly, hard-hearted men, tromping through the marsh in their heavy boots without sparing so much as a single thought for the masses of tiny frogs they crushed underfoot.
  • With 3,600 h.p. underfoot, acceleration was reasonably brisk, but the flickering wheel-slip indicator light showed the prudence of not putting full power through the traction motors while there were traces of early-morning dampness on the rails.1960 August, R. K. Evans, “Railway Modernisation in Spain”, in Trains Illustrated, page 494

adverbIn the way; situated so as to obstruct or hinder.

  • It would be easier to do a big project like that someday when we don't have a bunch of newcomers underfoot.
  • If you're not going to help, at least get out from underfoot.1978, Tom Reamy, Blind Voices

nounA storage compartment that sits below the deck of a boat.

  • In the early stages of fishing, storage space for wet fish was extremely limited, as three pounds on either side, and most of the staging and underfoots, contained ice, leaving only two empty pounds for stowage.1957, Report on an Experiment Into the Freezing of Fish at Sea, page 30
  • All too often saithe are put away with an inadequate amount of ice on them, or stowed in deep shelves or underfoots, where they become badly squashed and spoil more rapidly.1970, Torry Advisory Note - Issues 43-69, page 5
  • Progress was very slow owing to heavy floes and deep underfoots, which necessitated frequent stoppages of the engines.1999, Ernest Shackleton, South: The Endurance Expedition to Antarctica, →ISBN, page 283

verbTo provide a footing beneath; to shore up or underpin.

  • The result was to bring out the fact, which is now established beyond all doubt by the proof, that any attempt to underfoot the steeple would have been an entire mistake.1904, Sir John Rankine, The Scots Revised Reports, page 774

verbTo assign a column summary that is less than the sum of all the entries in that column.

  • Stay away from the client or taxpayer who conceals, pads, overstates or understates, alters, duplicates, overfoots or underfoots, diverts, manipulates, omits, falsifies and flagrantly disregards the IRS regulations.1980, The CPA Journal - Volume 50
  • In manually balancing the cash receipts journal prior to posting to the ledgers, it is quite possible to underfoot or overfoot columns deliberately in order to manipulate the account records to cover cash shortages.1983, Accounting and information systems: instructor's manual, →ISBN, page 258

More sentences with underfoot

  • The mud was thick and sticky underfoot, but we squelched through it nonetheless.From the entry squelch
  • Visiting a traditional vineyard, we watched the grape pressers treading the grapes underfoot.From the entry presser
  • The mud squelched underfoot; it had been raining all night.From the entry squelch
  • The mud was squishy underfoot after the rainstorm.From the entry squishy
  • You can feel the squelch of damp soil underfoot, the weight of a tankard in the hand.2026 January 31, Janan Ganesh, “The Hamnet wars”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC…. From the entry tankard
  • The hulking cream-and-gray flagstones underfoot had been worn away from centuries of service.2023 March 22, Ben West, “This 835-Year-Old English Manor Needs Some Modern Love”, in The New York Times. From the entry tick-tock
  • Ba hovers over a stove in the well-lit room, glancing when he hears the creak underfoot.2023, Trang Thanh Tran, She is a Haunting, →ISBN. From the entry bánh xèo
  • We also find touching more textured surfaces more energizing than feeling smoother ones underfoot, for example.2012, Sally Augustin, Cindy Coleman, The Designer's Guide to Doing Research, page 67. From the entry energizing
  • The mud crusts underfoot, remugient beasts stir up the undergrowth, Johnson attracts flies: greenflies, blowflies, blackflies, crutflies.1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 96. From the entry remugient
  • The general scenery is spellbinding, both underfoot as well as to the sides.1965, The New Yorker (volume 41, part 3, page 49). From the entry nemophilous
  • “But suppose you become a werebug, which could be crushed underfoot?1961, Ray Russell, Sardonicus and Other Stories, New York, NY: Ballantine Books, page 60. From the entry werefish
  • Underfoot is a rich brown marble from the shores of Lake Champlain.1923, Theodore Dreiser, The Color of a Great City, New York: Boni & Liveright. From the entry rep
  • Such stupidness is mad 'cause nothing underfoot comes to nothing less to add to a load of old tut.1977, Ian Drury, the Blockheads, Clever Trevor. From the entry tut
  • The conductor takes the instrument from his unresisting hands and breaks its neck underfoot, perfunctorily, as if crushing a box for recycling.2019 April 10, qntm, “CASE HATE RED”, in There Is No Antimemetics Division, →ISBN, page 138. From the entry rooted
  • Billycans were lost, dropped, trampled underfoot.2010, Kerry McGinnis, Wildhorse Creek, unnumbered page. From the entry billycan
  • The Eastern ski tribe could confidently expect much ice underfoot while the Western contingent could expect much mashed potatoes around the ankles.1996 Spring-Summer, Morten Lund, “Skiing Down Those Golden Years with John Jay”, in Skiing Heritage Journal, page 7. From the entry mashed potatoes
  • Underfoot, the genuine leather sole offers extra support to the new delicate sandalwear and superior flexibility to put spring into every step.1978 June 9, “Tips on toes will help you to step into this summer on the right foot”, in The Morning Record and Journal, 111th year…. From the entry sandalwear
  • On a recent trip to Dalton, Ga., Dean Wright, district retail manager for McSwain Carpets & Floors, learned the latest on luxe looks soon to be underfoot.2006, Cincinnati Magazine - Mar 2006, Vol. 39, No. 6, page 174. From the entry fifth wall
  • The air bore them up; they circled lazily over the heads of men, they lit on hands and faces and in the gaum of wounds, they died underfoot.2000, Howard Bahr, The Black Flower: A Novel of the Civil War, →ISBN, page 106. From the entry gaum
  • I only got to my feet from instinct, but there I suddenly was, upright and alive, skittering in front of all that jawing mess with my little board chattering underfoot.2008, Tim Winton, Breath, Picador UK Paperback edition 2008, Ch.11, p.53, 54. From the entry hellman
  • Mad jackhares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin roehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot.1985, Cormac McCarthy, chapter XIV, in Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West, 25th anniversary edition, New York, N.Y.…. From the entry jackhare

Meaning of underfoot

  1. adjective Situated under one's foot or feet.
  2. adjective In the way; placed so as to obstruct or hinder.
  3. adjective Downtrodden; abject.

Full definition of underfoot

Questions about underfoot in a sentence

How do you use underfoot in a sentence?
Underfoot is used as an adjective, adverb and noun. For example: “It would be easier to do a big project like that someday when we don't have a bunch of newcomers underfoot.”
What is a short sentence with underfoot?
“Billycans were lost, dropped, trampled underfoot.”
What does underfoot mean?
Underfoot means situated under one's foot or feet.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: underfoot (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use underfoot in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/underfoot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.