[See PACE sb.]
1. A walking pace. Chiefly in advb. phr. a foot-pace, at (or † in) a foot-pace = at a walking pace.
1538. Eliot, Pedepressim, a foote pase, softly.
1562. J. Heywood, Prov. & Epigr. (1867), 149.
| The best is behinde, euen so I thought it wolde: | |
| The best lacketh feete, foote pace with vs to holde. |
1607. Topsell, Four-f. Beasts (1658), 315. Cause him every day to be led up and down a foot pace a quarter of an hour, to make the humors come down.
1637. Breton, Poste w. packet, Wks. (Grosart), 41/1. For your foot-pace, I thinke you haue sore heeles, you walke so nicely, as vpon egge-shels.
1674. N. Cox, Gentl. Recreat., V. (1686), 5. Being oblig’d in search of their Game to toil their Horses all day, over deep Fallows, in a foot-pace only, they are likelier to bring their Horses to Weariness than Perfection.
1810. Sporting Mag., XXXVI. 90/1. The child was riding only a foot pace, and being on the lawn with two servants attending him, his parents naturally supposed he could not be in a place of greater safety, and the melancholy event has rendered his death the more distressing.
1859. Dickens, T. Two Cities, I. ii. ‘Come on at a footpace! d’ye mind me?’
2. Something on which to tread or set the feet.
† a. A carpet or mat. Obs.
1585. Higgins, trans. Junius’ Nomenclator, 249/2. Storea.… A mat: a footepase of sedges.
1653. H. Cogan, trans. Pinto’s Trav., xl. 160. A Chair of State of rich violet fluff trimmed with gold frenge, and at the foot of it a Cushion of the same, all upon an exceeding large foot-pace of tapestry.
1706. in Phillips (ed. Kersey).
b. A raised portion of a floor; a dais or platform; e.g., the step or raised floor on which an altar stands.
1580. Hollyband, Treas. Fr. Tong, Marche-pied, a footepace, a threshold, a groundsill.
1598. in Mem. Stepney Parish (1890–1), 34. Item, that there be made about the communion table a raile wth a foote pace and mattes thereon to kneele vpon decent and orderly.
1612. Bacon, Ess., Judicature (Arb.), 456. The place of Iustice is an hallowed place; and therefore not onely the bench, but the footepace and precincts and purprise thereof ought to bee preserued without scandall and corruption.
a. 1676. Whitelocke, Mem. (1682), 609. At the upper end upon a Foot pace and Carpet, stood the Protector with a Chair of State behind him.
a. 1697. Aubrey, Nat. Hist. Surrey (1719), V. 193. The Communion Table … having Enrichments of a Glory, Cherubims, Doves, &c. placed on a fine black and white Marble Footpace.
1845. Ecclesiologist, IV. May, 102. The top of the footpace, or altar-platform, which ought never to be wanting, is the place for altar-carpets, which ought therefore to be of the size of the platform.
1872. O. Shipley, Gloss. Eccl. Terms, Footpace.… A raised flooring in a bay window.
c. A hearth-stone.
1652. Gaule, Πῦς-μαντία, the Mag-astro-mancer, 181. The crickets chirping behind the chimney stock; or creeping upon the foot-pace.
1703. T. N., City & C. Purchaser, 220. Some Pavements, (as in Foot-paces before Chimneys) are laid all of one sort, or Colour, and in one intire Stone.
1840. Parker, Gloss. Archit. (ed. 3), 93. Foot-pace, the dais. This term is also sometimes used for the hearth-stone.
d. A half landing on a staircase or flight of steps; also called half-pace.
1703. Moxon, Mech. Exerc., 160. Foot-pace, is a part of a pair of Stairs, whereon after four or six steps you arrive to a broad place, where you make two or three paces before you ascend another step; thereby to ease the legs in ascending the rest of the steps.
1842. Gwilt, Encycl. Archit., Gloss., Foot Pace or Half Pace.
