FOOTSTOOL

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does footstool mean? 

• FOOTSTOOL (noun)
  The noun FOOTSTOOL has 1 sense:

1. a low seat or a stool to rest the feet of a seated person

  Familiarity information: FOOTSTOOL used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FOOTSTOOL (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A low seat or a stool to rest the feet of a seated person

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Synonyms:

footrest; footstool; ottoman; tuffet

Hypernyms ("footstool" is a kind of...):

stool (a simple seat without a back or arms)

 Context examples 

There was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on which my mother had painted a nosegay.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Adele, who appeared to be still under the influence of a most solemnising impression, sat down, without a word, on the footstool I pointed out to her.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Esther fitted up the closet with a little table, placed a footstool before it, and over it a picture taken from one of the shut-up rooms.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

A messenger was despatched half a day’s journey before us, to give the king notice of my approach, and to desire, that his majesty would please to appoint a day and hour, when it would by his gracious pleasure that I might have the honour to lick the dust before his footstool.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left Hunsford—between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was arranging Miss de Bourgh's footstool, that she said, 'Mr. Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly, choose a gentlewoman for my sake; and for your own, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her.'

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain had suffered all the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Julia's work, too ill done for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by William, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the mainmast.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

It was a picture of comfort, full of easy-chairs, cushions and footstools, worked by his mother's hand, and with no sort of thing omitted that could help to render it complete.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Demi's miracle of mechanical skill, though the cover wouldn't shut, Rob's footstool had a wiggle in its uneven legs that she declared was soothing, and no page of the costly book Amy's child gave her was so fair as that on which appeared in tipsy capitals, the words—To dear Grandma, from her little Beth.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of the fire—making a kind of arbour of the dining table, which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)