footnote meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

footnote

noun

UK /ˈfʊtˌnəʊt/ · US /ˈfʊtˌnoʊt/

Etymology From foot + note.

A short piece of text, often numbered, placed at the bottom of a printed page, that adds a comment, citation, reference etc, to a designated part of the main text.

consult the footnotes for more details
Above all, the 48-page timetables of the new service, which have been distributed free at every station in the scheme, are a model to the rest of B.R. For the first time on British Railways, so far as we are aware, a substantial timetable has been produced, not only without a single footnote but also devoid of all wearisome asterisks, stars, letter suffixes and other hieroglyphics.1960 December, “The Glasgow Suburban Electrification is opened”, in Trains Illustrated, page 714:

Broadly An event of lesser importance than some larger event to which it is related.

a mere footnote in history
If we are another footnote to Plato, Plato was himself already a footnote to still earlier footnotes, in an endless chain of footnotes to footnotes2012, Martin McQuillan, Political Archive of Paul de Man, page 72:

2 more examples

In that context Scotland's fate is a modest element, a symptom of wider fragmentation of the current global order, a footnote to the fall of empire and the Berlin Wall, important to us and punchdrunk neighbours like France and Italy, a mere curiosity to emerging titans like Brazil.2014 September 8, Michael White, “Roll up, roll up! The Amazing Salmond will show a Scotland you won't believe”, in The Guardian:
Now, with her new book Beyond the Wall, Hoyer is seeking to retrieve the GDR from being written off as a chilling “footnote in German history”, a miserably grey country synonymous with unflinching totalitarianism.2023 April 28, Frederick Studemann, “Katja Hoyer: we need to hear ‘the whole story’ about East Germany”, in Financial Times, London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC:

A qualification to the import of something.

Derived terms: footnoter

footnote

verb

Etymology From foot + note.

To add footnotes to a text.

She does everything she does with a kind of terrifying thoroughness, footnoted and bibliographied, as it were, down to the smallest detail.1979 April 14, Nancy Walker, “Kiss and Tell”, in Gay Community News, page 13:

Related terms: marginalia, reference mark

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