footloose
Americanadjective
adjective
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free to go or do as one wishes
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eager to travel; restless
to feel footloose
Etymology
Origin of footloose
Explanation
If you’re footloose, you have no responsibilities or attachments and you're free to roam. You can go where you want and do as you please. You might even want to kick off your shoes and dance, like the teens in the 1984 movie Footloose. Being footloose is being free of obligations — no job, pet, house, schoolwork, or sweetheart to hold you down. A footloose and fancy-free person might take a year off after high school just to wander. You'll often find footloose in the phrase "footloose and fancy-free." In the 17th century, footloose meant literally "with feet unshackled."
Vocabulary lists containing footloose
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Governments’ basic competitive problem is that they are landlocked and are competitors for capital that is footloose on a global scale.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 19, 2026
"If they leave, either the jobs disappear entirely, or factories scrabble to receive orders from footloose buying agents who care only about cheap labour and do not worry about factory conditions," Bowman told Reuters.
From Reuters ● Aug. 16, 2023
Dominique Lapierre, a footloose French journalist who documented beauty, hope and peace amid war, poverty and disease in a long series of popular books, including “Is Paris Burning?”
From New York Times ● Dec. 9, 2022
He left in 2016, spending his days footloose and fancy-free at the Oakland Zoo.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 23, 2022
Rowan could imagine the shock it must have caused when it became known that Sara, the sensible village teacher, would leave Rin to marry a footloose Traveler.
From "Rowan of Rin" by Emily Rodda
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
