Meaning
To pay a bill or cover the whole cost of something, especially a large or unwelcome expense that other people have run up. Often used when the payer does so reluctantly or by default, as when a parent, employer, council or taxpayer ends up paying for everyone else. Neutral to slightly rueful in tone; standard in all main varieties of English. Everyday and neutral in register, but often carries a faint complaint about who ends up paying. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The verb 'foot' carried an accounting sense from the late 1400s: to add up a column of figures and write the total at the foot, or bottom, of the page, the same idea that gives us 'footnote'. The step from 'add up' to 'pay' appears in the 19th century: the Online Etymology Dictionary dates 'foot' meaning 'pay the entirety of' to 1848 and explains it as tallying the expenses and settling the figure written at the bottom of the sheet, while the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms dates the idiom itself to the early 1800s. So the reading of 'foot' as the foot of the bill or account, the line where the total stands, is the documented one, and it matches the old 'foot up' sense of computing a sum. A rival folk story ties 'foot' to footing a bill on the spot, but reference works support the bookkeeping explanation.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- foot the bill for
- foot the tab
- foot the whole bill
- footing the bill
Usage Examples
- With the insurance claim still unresolved, the council had to foot the bill for the emergency repairs.
- Taxpayers will foot the bill for the new stadium whether they attend matches or not.
- Her older brother footed the bill for her final year at university.