footpad

• foot-pad

From foot +‎ pad.

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footpad (plural footpads)

1. The soft underside of an animal's paw.
2. (medicine) A medicated bandage for the treatment of corns and warts.
3. (archaic) A thief on foot who robs travellers on the road.
   • 1874, Marcus Clarke, “chapter V”, in For the Term of His Natural Life:

     The fraudulent clerk and the flash "cracksman" interchanged experiences. The smuggler's stories of lucky ventures and successful runs were capped by the footpad’s reminiscences of foggy nights and stolen watches.

   • 1912, The New York Times:

     Col. Isaac Trumbo, who made a fortune in Utah and lost it in San Francisco, died here to-day of injuries received last Saturday night, when he was beaten by footpads.

   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 71:

     He would lend it to get rid of Podson: the price of three weeks' food money extorted from him by a footpad.

   • 1954 October 11, “Advertising”, in The Sydney Morning Herald‎, N.S.W.: National Library of Australia, retrieved 28 February 2013, page 5:

     Coach Leather. The pliant but resolute stuff our grandfathers utilised to keep out wind, weather and footpads on the Great North Road or the Gundagai Track, according to whether you are Third or Fourth G.A.

   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Viking Press, →OCLC:

     It suddenly occurred to me this was my mother of about two hundred years ago in England, and that I was her footpad son, returning from gaol to haunt her honest labors in the hashery.

   • 1993, Robert Jordan, “Chapter 16: An Unexpected Offer”, in The Fires of Heaven (The Wheel of Time; 5), New York: Tor Books, published 1994, →ISBN, page 316:

     “The thief-catcher always sought out the cutpurses and burglars and footpads in a town; he claimed they knew more of what was really going on then any official."

4. (Australia) An unmade, minor walking trail formed only by foot traffic.
   • 1933 October 26, “Nemarluck badly wounded”, in Western Mail‎, Perth, W.A.: National Library of Australia, retrieved 23 February 2013, page 31:

     Nemarluck, if wounded in the way described by the aborigines at Talc Head, will keep to the beaten footpad leading from Delissaville to the Finnis River, and in his weakened state, will not camp any night far from a waterhole or without a fire.

   • 1950 December 22, “Bush tracks for motorists”, in The Argus (The Argus Week-end Magazine)‎, Melbourne, Vic.: National Library of Australia, retrieved 23 February 2013, page 29:

     The rough dray track that leads to the south-cast soon becomes a poorly defined footpad which follows the tortuous pattern of the main spur through to Mount Everard, and then away to east and south to the far corner of the forest.

   • 2008, John Chapman with Monica Chapman, Overland Track, →ISBN, page 56:

     Ignore the minor foot pad to the left — it is a scrubby track leading to a climbers' site known as Geryon Campsite.

   • 2010?, “Mt Hotham Bushwalking and Trails”, in Hotham‎, archived from the original on 7 March 2013:

     This AAWT track varies from a four wheel drive track along the Barry Mountains to a foot pad across the snow grass plains of the high country from Hotham to Mt Bogong.

• foot pad (walking trail)

footpad (third-person singular simple present footpads, present participle footpadding, simple past and past participle footpadded)

1. (archaic) To rob travellers on the road.
   • 1894, The Blue and Gold - Volume 21, page 172:

     When Mr. Kaiser was footpadded last December, the scare seemed to penetrate even the quiet town of Berkeley.

   • 1988, Michael Talbot, To the ends of the earth, page 15:

     Before that 'e footpadded round Covent Garden with a crew o' other masterless soldiers an' suchlike, calling 'imself "Captain Gun", as nasty a bill o' goods as ever slit your pocket or cut your throat,' Pope added, with loathing for the many thousands of defeated men who had limped home to live off the city streets which, by right and custom already belonged to established families of beggars and pickpockets, dog snatchers and cloak snitchers.

   • 1996, James Thompson, Models of value: eighteenth-century political economy and the novel:

     To his first investment, Jack adds the money stolen by footpadding, all of which comes to £94 (CJ, 77).

2. To sneak on foot.
   • 1926, Charles Leroy Edson, "The Great American Ass": An Autobiography, page 313:

     But the joke is on me, for they unmasked me by footpadding me to the alley and stealing my clothes and shoes.

   • 1974, Brian Jones, For mad Mary: poems, page 13:

     My dreams are secret, footpadding through darkness for fear the day arrest them.

   • 1977, Wallace Hamilton, Coming out, page 238:

     "And every little sneaky infidelity . . . every little back-alley footpadding to find some quickie with a hustler — where does that fit into the code?"