Footling

//ˈfuːt.lɪŋ// adj, noun, verb

adj, noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A fetus oriented so that, at birth, its foot or feet will emerge first. A type of breech birth.

    "In 1999 my fourth child (third daughter) made an unexpected footling breech presentation."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of footle form-of, gerund, participle, present
Adjective
  1. 1
    trivial, silly and irritating.

    "He was explaining to her things about the air service. . . . "Isn't it rather dangerous work?" she asked. She felt it was a footling question even as she asked it."

Adjective
  1. 1
    (informal) small and of little importance wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
cursorydepthlessfeet firstfewfiddlingfiddling

Example

More examples

"He was explaining to her things about the air service. . . . "Isn't it rather dangerous work?" she asked. She felt it was a footling question even as she asked it."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From footle + -ing.

Etymology 2

From foot + -ling.

Related phrases

breech birth

More for "footling"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.