Word.ws English Dictionary

set foot

set foot verb: to enter.

Verb

set foot (third-person singular simple present sets foot, present participle setting foot, simple past and past participle set foot)

  1. (idiomatic, rhetorical with 'in') To enter
    • Yet had I scarce set foot in the passage when I stopped, remembering how once already this same evening I had played the coward, and run home scared with my own fears.1898, J. Meade Falkner, chapter 4, in Moonfleet (fiction)
  2. (idiomatic, rhetorical with 'on') To step onto
    • After the boat capsized, I thought that I would never set foot on dry land again.
    • Who would dare set foot on this inhospitable summit?2009 May 13, Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Up, spoken by newsreel announcer (David Kaye), Walt Disney Pictures & Pixar Animation Studios

set foot meaning in Tamil and Kannada

set foot in Tamil

to step onto
கால்வை kālvai

set foot in Kannada

ಪ್ರಯಾಣ ಬೆಳೆಸು, ಪ್ರಯಾಣ ಮಾಡು

Forms of set foot

third-person singular presentsets foot
present participlesetting foot
past participleset foot
pastset foot
alternative formstep foot

Questions about set foot

What does set foot mean?
Set foot means to enter.
What is set foot in Tamil?
Set foot in Tamil is கால்வை (kālvai). See Set foot meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is set foot?
Set foot is a verb.
What is the past tense of set foot?
The past tense of set foot is set foot.

Words near set foot in the dictionary

  1. set fire of
  2. set fire on
  3. set fire to
  4. set fire unto
  5. set fire upon
  6. set foot
  7. set foot on land
  8. set for life
  9. set forth
  10. set forward
  11. set forwards

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: set foot (page history and authors); set foot (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: En-au-set foot.ogg.

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