[Attrib. use of UNDERFOOT adv.]
1. Lying under the foot or feet. Also spec. (see later quots.)
1596. Nashe, Saffron Walden, K 4. The strange vntraffiqu’t phrases,… as of incendarie for fire,… an vnder foote abiect for a shooe or a boote.
1824. Mactaggart, Gallovid. Encycl., 454. Underfit peats, peat turf, digged beneath the foot not in the common way of cutting them of a breest.
1844. Stephens, Bk. Farm, II. 318. In the under-foot wheel, the horses draw by means of trace-chains and swing-tree.
2. Inferior, abject, low, downtrodden.
1594. Nashe, Unfort. Trav., B 1 b. Euerie vnder-foot souldior had a distenanted tun, as Diogenes had his tub to sleepe in.
1641. Milton, Reform., II. 90. The most dejected, most underfoot and downe-trodden Vassals of Perdition. Ibid. (1645), Tetrach., 17. What a stupidnes then is it, that … wee should deject our selvs to such a sluggish and underfoot Philosophy.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res., II. iii. My Schoolmaster, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr.
