footprint

/ˌfʊtˈprɪnt/

/ˈfʊtprɪnt/

Other forms: footprints

A footprint is the mark left by your feet on the ground or floor. If you dog runs away from you on the beach, you might find her by following her footprints in the sand.

Your dad might scold you for tracking footprints across the clean kitchen floor — or you might hurry outside after a blizzard to be the first person in your neighborhood to make footprints in the fresh snow. A footprint is proof that you were there: similarly, a figurative kind of footprint is evidence of someone or something's presence or influence. For example, a company's "carbon footprint" is the amount of polluting greenhouse gas it emits.

Definitions of footprint

1. noun

   a mark of a foot or shoe on a surface
   “the police made casts of the footprints in the soft earth outside the window”

   synonyms: footmark, step

   types:

   footprint evidence

   evidence in the form of footprints

   type of:

   mark, print

   a visible indication made on a surface
2. noun

   a trace suggesting that something was once present or felt or otherwise important
   “the footprints of an earlier civilization”

   type of:

   shadow, tincture, trace, vestige

   an indication that something has been present
3. noun

   the area taken up by some object
   “the computer had a desktop footprint of 10 by 16 inches”

   type of:

   area, expanse, surface area

   the extent of a 2-dimensional surface enclosed within a boundary