Meaning & use
footloose
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Meaning
adjectivenot comparableinformal
Free to go anywhere and do what you like, with no ties or responsibilities.
Grammar: Used after a linking verb: she felt footloose. It is not usually used before a noun and has no comparative form.
Patterns
- feel footloose
- be footloose and fancy-free
After the children left home, they felt footloose and ready to travel.
He gave up his job and spent a footloose year wandering around Asia.
She liked being footloose, with no rent or mortgage to worry about.
Common combinations
- footloose and fancy-free
- Now that exams are over, the students are footloose and fancy-free.
- feel footloose
- After retiring, he felt footloose for the first time in years.
- a footloose lifestyle
- Their footloose lifestyle meant moving to a new city every year.
- footloose traveler
- As a footloose traveler, she never booked more than a week ahead.
Synonyms and how they differ
- carefree
- Carefree means free from worry; footloose stresses freedom to move and lack of ties, not just lack of worry.
- unattached
- Unattached means not married or not connected to a group; footloose is broader and suggests you can go anywhere.
- free-spirited
- Free-spirited describes an independent personality; footloose focuses on having no commitments holding you down.
Opposites
Word family
- footloose and fancy-free phrase
- A fixed expression meaning completely free of responsibilities.
Commonly confused: footloose or footless? footloose or loose?
footloose vs footless
Footless means having no feet; footloose means free to move around with no responsibilities.
footloose vs loose
Loose means not tight or not firmly fixed; footloose is about personal freedom, not physical looseness.
Practice
My aunt sold her house and traveled for two years. She was completely ___.
Choose one answer.
Footloose means free to go anywhere with no ties, which fits her traveling life. 'Footsore' means having sore feet from walking, which describes a physical problem, not freedom.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “footloose”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.