Editor's Corner

About a year ago, I provided you with phrases about body parts in Editor’s Corner. One of you, my former manager Shawn, said he didn’t think “foot the bill” made sense. Well, sometimes it takes me a while to get back to things. Today, I’ll finally provide you with a short, but sweet answer about feet (or foots).

Here is an explanation of where the idiom “foot the bill” comes from, from our heroes at The Grammarist:

Foot the bill is an idiom that has been in use since the 1800s.

Foot the bill means to pay for something, to be financially responsible for goods or services, especially when the amount owed is a large one. Often, the term foot the bill is used when someone is being generous or taking responsibility for an enormous debt. The idiom foot the bill is derived from an earlier idiom first used in the 1500s: foot up. This phrase meant to add up the figures on a document and come to a total at the foot of the bill. By the early 1800s, the phrase had morphed into today’s form, foot the bill, meaning to pay the total at the foot of the bill. Related phrases are foots the bill and footing the bill.

I hope that makes more sense now. We don’t say “foot up” these days, but you might hear “tally up” the bill. I love it when someone else foots the bill, unless that means they are just using their toes to pass the bill to me under the table.

Kara Church | Technical Editor, Advisory | Technical Publications

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