The metrical foot (late Old English, translating Latin pes, Greek pous in the same sense) is commonly taken to represent one rise and one fall of a foot: keeping time according to some, dancing according to others. The medieval Paul's Foot (late 14c.) was a measuring standard cut into the base of a column at the old St. "That the Saxon units should descend to mediæval times is most probable, as the Normans were a ruling, and not a working, class.". All three correspond to units used by the Romans, and possibly all three lengths were picked up by the Anglo-Saxons from the Romano-Britons. The Anglo-Saxon foot apparently was between the two. English churches (Flinders Petrie, "Inductive Metrology"), but the most usual length of a "foot" in medieval England was the foot of 13.2 inches common throughout the ancient Mediterranean. The current inch and foot are implied from measurements in 12c. The linear measure was in Old English (the exact length has varied over time), this being considered the length of a man's foot a unit of measure used widely and anciently. "terminal part of the leg of a vertebrate animal," Old English fot "foot," from Proto-Germanic *fōts (source also of Old Frisian fot, Old Saxon fot, Old Norse fotr, Danish fod, Swedish fot, Dutch voet, Old High German fuoz, German Fuß, Gothic fotus "foot"), from PIE root *ped- "foot." Plural form feet is an instance of i-mutation.
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