Front-foot

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    On the front foot; acting so as to take control of a situation.

    "Front foot thinking is about 'being in place', taking the initiative and being proactive, rather than being caught on the back foot, reactive, defensive and uncertain."

  2. 2
    Based on the width of the front of a property. attributive, not-comparable

    "There are, of course, excellent examples of extensions to existing systems being carried out on the front-foot assessment plan, but this procedure is distinctly different from the programs herein outlined as applied to newly created systems of large size."

Example

More examples

"Front foot thinking is about 'being in place', taking the initiative and being proactive, rather than being caught on the back foot, reactive, defensive and uncertain."

Etymology

From the phrase on the front foot.

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