barefoot

Word family

• bare
  adjectiveB1
• foot
  nounA1
• barefooted
  adjectiveB2

Synonym discussion

Sense: adjective/1

Barefoot is the standard everyday word for having no shoes or socks on. Shoeless shows up more in literary writing and often suggests that shoes have been taken off or lost, rather than simply never put on; a shoeless refugee in a news report carries a different emotional weight than a barefoot child playing in the garden. Unshod is the most formal of the group and has an old-fashioned, almost biblical ring to it; you might read about unshod pilgrims or unshod feet in a poem, but nobody would use it in conversation. For everyday speech and writing, stick with barefoot — it is the natural, unmarked choice.

Common collocations

Etymology

Comes directly from Old English bærfōt, a compound of bær (meaning 'naked' or 'uncovered') and fōt ('foot'). The word has changed very little in form or meaning for over a thousand years. Related words appear across the Germanic languages, including Dutch barrevoets and German barfuß, all tracing back to the same ancient root.