Word.ws English Dictionary

setting foot

setting foot is the present participle and gerund of set foot.

Meaning of set foot

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.

Questions about setting foot

What is setting foot the present participle and gerund of?
Setting foot is the present participle and gerund of set foot.

Words near setting foot in the dictionary

  1. setting fire of
  2. setting fire on
  3. setting fire to
  4. setting fire unto
  5. setting fire upon
  6. setting foot
  7. setting forth
  8. setting forward
  9. setting forwards
  10. setting free
  11. setting in

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: setting foot (page history and authors); set foot (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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