footnote
noun
- note at the foot of a page
verb
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L331745 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈfʊtˌnəʊt/ / /ˈfʊtˌnoʊt/
noun
Etymology: From foot + note.
- A short piece of text, often numbered, placed at the bottom of a printed page, that adds a comment, citation, reference etc, to a designated part of the main text.
“consult the footnotes for more details”
“Above all, the 48-page timetables of the new service, which have been distributed free at every station in the scheme, are a model to the rest of B.R. For the first time on British Railways, so far as we are aware, a substantial timetable has been produced, not only without a single footnote but also devoid of all wearisome asterisks, stars, letter suffixes and other hieroglyphics.”
- An event of lesser importance than some larger event to which it is related.
“a mere footnote in history”
“If we are another footnote to Plato, Plato was himself already a footnote to still earlier footnotes, in an endless chain of footnotes to footnotes”
- A qualification to the import of something.
verb
Etymology: From foot + note.
- To add footnotes to a text.
“She does everything she does with a kind of terrifying thoroughness, footnoted and bibliographied, as it were, down to the smallest detail.”