1. A stool upon which to rest the foot or feet.
1530. Palsgr., 222/2. Fote stole, marchepied.
c. 1611. Chapman, Iliad, XIV. 201.
| He forg’d a footstool for the ease | |
| Of thy soft feet, when wine and feasts thy golden humours please. |
1725. Pope, Odyss., XVII. 270.
| Dearly, full dearly shalt thou buy thy bread | |
| With many a footstool thund’ring at thy head. |
1849. G. P. R. James, The Woodman, ii. There she sat with her feet on a footstool, sufficiently near the fire to be somewhat over warm, but yet hardly near enough for that delicious tinging sensation, which the blaze of good dry wood produces till we hardly know whether it is pleasant or painful.
b. fig.
1535. Coverdale, Ps. cix. [cx.] 1. The Lorde sayde vnto my Lorde: Syt thou on my right hande, vntill I make thine enemies thy fotestole.
1593. Shaks., 3 Hen. VI., V. vii. 14.
| Thus have we swept suspicion from our seat, | |
| And made our footstool of security. |
1668. H. More, Div. Dial., IV. xxvi. (1713), 363. The Popes have as well made Foot-balls of the Crowns of Emperours as Foot-stools of their Necks.
1860. Farrar, Orig. Lang., iv. 86. It may have been the providential agent to assert for the human race, ‘a nobler destiny than to become the footstool of a few families.’
c. U.S. colloq. The earth. (Cf. Isaiah lxvi. 1.)
1891. Boston (Mass.) Jrnl., 12 Sept., 5/1. I found Mauchline to be the most God-forsaken place on the footstool.
† 2. A stool to step upon, in order to climb to a higher position. Also fig. b. (See quot. 1611.)
1599. Minsheu, A Foot-stoole to lift a woman to horse, vide Andilla.
1611. Cotgr., Suppied d’orgues, the footstoole, or pedalls to a paire of Organs.
1640. Fuller, Holy & Prof. St., V. xv. 418. He oftentimes reveals it, and by making a foot-stool of his friends head, climbs up the higher into the Princes favour.
1702. Rowe, Tamerl., II. ii. 696.
| I would have taught thy Neck to know my weight, | |
| And mounted from that Footstool to my Saddle. |
Hence Footstooled ppl. a., provided with a footstool.
1791. Cowper, Odyss., I. 163.
| Then, leading her toward a foolstool’d throne | |
| Magnificent, which first he overspread | |
| With linen. |
1856. Dobell, Eng. in Time War, Grass fr. Battle-field.
| My shoe, soft footstooled on this hearth, so far | |
| From strife, hath such a patch, and as he past | |
| His broken shoelace whipt his eager haste. |
