a. [SOFT a. 29.] Having feet that tread softly. In early use fig.

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1612.  Chapman, Rev. Bussy D’Ambois, V. iii. The black soft-footed hour is now on wing.

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1656.  Cowley, Pindar, Odes, 2nd Olympique, viii. Soft-footed Winds … Dance through the perfum’d Air.

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1736.  Ainsworth, I. s.v., Soft footed, mollipes.

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1894.  Louise D. Mitchell, in Outing, 346/2. The soft-footed maid had just left them.

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  Hence Soft-footedly adv.

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1834.  Lytton, Pilgr. Rhine, xi. (1840), 139. He [the fox] walked very soft-footedly.

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