hotfoot
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 1.67 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
The prank of secretly inserting a match between the sole and upper of a victim's shoe and then lighting it.
American usage
adj
Moving with haste or zeal.
Example Sentences
- "Half the populace are idle, / Half are busy in a room; / All are gravebound from the cradle, / All are hotfoot for their doom."
- "He hotfooted the four-and-a-half blocks across town to the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and checked out the books Patterson had mentioned—and everything else about China he could quickly think of."
- "The Ford was shot up heavily, so Larkin hotfooted the last mile to Ewa. Once there, he took cover beneath a truck as unchallenged Zeros strafed the neatly parked MAG-21 aircraft and the base facilities."
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: hot-fot
Usage
- American usage
- British usage
- Transitive verb
Inflected Forms
Phrases
hotfoot it
hotfoot spell