dial. and colloq. [var. of FOUGHTY.] Paltry, poor, mean, worthless; little and insignificant.
1752. W. Dodd, Beauties Shaks., I. Preface, p. vii. Many a critic, when he has met with a passage not clear to his conception, and perhaps above the level of his own ideas, so far from attempting to explain his author, has immediately condemned the expression as foolish and absurd, and foisted in some footy emendation of his own: a proceeding by no means justifiable; for the text of an author is a sacred thing; ’tis dangerous to meddle with it, nor should it ever be done, but in the most desperate cases.
1833. Marryat, P. Simple, xxxiii. I think it would be a very pretty bit of practice to the ship’s company, to take her out from under that footy battery.
1873. Miss Braddon, Str. & Pilgr., III. iv. 260. You could not possibly be married from that footy little house in the Boroughbridge-road.
1890. R. Kipling, The Phantom ’Rickshaw, 85. Then we goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too, and they fires a footy little arrow at us.
