avant-pied

Forms

avant-pied m (plural avant-pieds)^[1][2] Old and Middle French avanpié, avantpié, plural avanpiez, avantpiez.^[3][4][5]

Etymology

It is a compound from French avant + pied, first recorded as Old French avanpié.^[2][1][6][7] The FEW files it under Latin pes “foot”.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Its first record is in Chrétien de Troyes' Chevalier de la charrette (about 1172), in a list of footwear: Soller ne chauce n'avanpié, where it means the front part of a shoe or boot, the vamp.^[2][6][3]

Semantic evolution

In Old and Middle French it was a term of shoemaking and hosiery: the upper of a boot, the front part of a shoe, or a foot-piece sewn onto hose; regulations of 1350 and 1404 fix the price and cut of such pieces, and Villon leaves his houseaulx sans avanpiez, his boots without vamps.^[3][4] In the 16th century Ambroise Paré applied it in anatomy to the front of the foot, counting ten bones a l'avant pied.^[2][3] Cotgrave (1611) defines it as the part of the foot next to the toes, made of five bones.^[8]

Littré gives the anatomical sense, as a synonym of métatarse, and the shoemaker's sense, the vamp of a boot.^[1] In modern anatomy the forefoot is the metatarsus and the toes, opposed to the arrière-pied or tarsus;^[9] the shoe industry uses it for the front of the foot or of the last and for the front part of the shoe.^[9] Nineteenth-century dictionaries also record a historical sense, a kind of shoe later called the soulier à la poulaine.^[9]

Timeline

• c. 1172 – Avanpié in Chrétien de Troyes' Chevalier de la charrette.^[2][6]
• 1350 – A royal ordinance mentions putting an avant pied on hose.^[3][4]
• c. 1456 – Villon's Lais has houseaulx sans avanpiez.^[4]
• 16th century – Ambroise Paré uses it in anatomy.^[2][3]
• 1611 – Cotgrave records the anatomical sense.^[8]
• 1912 – An anatomy manual divides the foot into arrière-pied and avant-pied.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. (anatomy) The front part of the foot, made up of the metatarsus and the toes: une fracture de l'avant-pied.^[9][2]
2. Avant-pied plat: a flattening of the front transverse arch of the foot.^[9]
3. (shoemaking) The front part of the foot or of the last.^[9]
4. (shoemaking) The front of a shoe or boot, the vamp.^[9][1]

Related words

• arrière-pied
• avant-bras
• métatarse

References

1. ^ a b c d Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
2. ^ a b c d e f g Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
3. ^ a b c d e f Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon
4. ^ a b c d e Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf
5. ^ FROLEX 3.0, lexique morphologique du français médiéval (IXe–XVe s.), Base de français médiéval, ENS de Lyon (from the BFM, the Nouveau Corpus d'Amsterdam and the DMF), github.com/sheiden/Medieval-French-Language-Toolkit
6. ^ a b c Hatzfeld, Adolphe; Darmesteter, Arsène; Thomas, Antoine (1890–1900), Dictionnaire général de la langue française du commencement du XVIIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours, Paris: Delagrave
7. ^ Wartburg, Walther von, et al. (1922–2002), Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, 25 vols., Bonn / Leipzig / Basel: Klopp / Teubner / Zbinden, p. 8, 303a
8. ^ a b Cotgrave, Randle (1611), A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, London: Adam Islip
9. ^ a b c d e f g h Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard