So, this is fairly random, but as I am on the Pathetic Anglophilia beat here, I thought I would write about a distinction between British and American English that I hadn't ever noticed before:\r\n
We\u2019ve made an exciting new acquisition! To celebrate Egyptian footballing star @MoSalah<\/a> being top scorer in the Premier League this season, we\u2019ll be displaying his boots alongside objects from ancient Egypt in the run up to the Champions League final \u26bd\ufe0f? pic.twitter.com\/DBZDW5Q6kD<\/a><\/p>— British Museum (@britishmuseum) May 17, 2018<\/a><\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n
In the US, we would never ever refer to those as boots<\/i>.\r\n
The current MLB controversy about footwear made it fairly easy for me to ascertain that sports reporters in the US will refer to such shoes as spikes<\/a> or cleats<\/a> (that's synecdoche, if you're following at home) and that the official rules of MLB<\/a> refer to them as shoes<\/i>. There are lots of words for athletic shoes, of course—trainers, tennies, sneakers, etc—and there is such a thing as an athletic boot<\/a> in the US, but it doesn't look like a football boot<\/a>.\r\n
In fact, I would have assumed, not knowing anything, that if UK boots<\/i> were something like a US sneakers<\/i>, they would be high-tops<\/i>, such as I still call chucks<\/i>. What distinguishes a boot from a shoe, after all, is that a boot covers the ankle (and sometimes the calf) and a shoe does not. This is not so, however; most football boots appear to be low-cut. I've no idea why they are called boots<\/I>, then, and not trainers, but there it is.\r\n
Thanks,
-Ed.\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The OED didn’t help, although I was surprised to learn that ‘booty’ (as in pirate) was probably not derived from ‘boot’ meaning profit (as in the phrase ‘to boot’), at least not directly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idioms","category-specific-words"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17446"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17449,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17446\/revisions\/17449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}