What does shoe mean?
Shoe is an everyday English noun for a piece of footwear that covers the foot, normally with a sole and often a heel. The term is broad enough to include leather shoes, athletic shoes, dress shoes, sandals, slippers, and many other styles, although some of these have more specific names. In phrases such as “a pair of shoes,” “shoe size,” and “take off your shoes,” it refers to the physical item worn on the foot. Shoe also functions as a verb: people can shoe themselves or another person, and a specialist can shoe a horse by fitting horseshoes to its hooves. The word is familiar, practical, and unusually useful because it can name both an everyday object and a specialized action. Its vocabulary relatives include the Germanic word for a shoe and, more distantly, English sock.
A piece of footwear that covers the foot, usually with a sole and often a heel.
"He wore his oldest pair of shoes to the garden."
The general term is common in both British and American English, although specific styles have more precise names.
To put shoes on someone or something; to fit or attach a shoe, especially a horseshoe, to an animal's hoof.
"The farrier came to shoe the horses."
The animal-related sense is specialized, while the sense of putting shoes on is straightforward but relatively uncommon in modern everyday speech.
The regular plural takes the ending -s.
"She bought a new pair of shoes for the winter."
Your sock and your shoe are linguistic cousins, descending from the same ancient Germanic word family.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does shoe come from?
The English noun descends from Old English sōc, meaning a shoe, and ultimately from a reconstructed Proto-Germanic form commonly written *sōkiz or *sōkuz. The same ancestral word underlies cognates such as German Schuh, Dutch schoen, and Swedish sko; English sock is also a close cognate whose meaning has shifted. The verb developed from the noun's concrete sense of a covering or fitting placed over the foot or an animal's hoof.
Related word forms
How shoe is actually used
As a noun, shoe is standard in both British and American English and generally refers to footwear for the foot, while a boot usually covers the ankle or lower leg. As a verb, shoe is relatively uncommon in everyday speech except in technical contexts such as shoeing a horse.
Easily confused with shoe
A shoe is an item of footwear, while a shoot is a plant stem or an act of firing a gun or similar device.