a. [SQUARE a. 12.]
1. Of shoes: Having broad square toes.
1785. Grose, Dict. Vulgar T., s.v. Square toes, Square-toed shoes were anciently worn in common, and long retained by old men.
1803. Censor, 1 April, 47. In a superfine coat with waistcoat, and … hessian boots, or square-toed shoes.
1897. ‘H. S. Merriman,’ In Kedar’s Tents, xi. The priest had walked thither, as the dust on his square-toed shoes and black stockings would testify.
2. fig. Old-fashioned, formal, precise.
1795. Burke, Regic. Peace, iv. (C.P.S.), 294. We old people must retain some square-toed predilection for the fashions of our youth.
1803. Pegge, Anecd. Eng. Lang., 131. Square-toed and old fashioned as it may be, it certainly weeds the sense at once of all equivocation.
1846. Mrs. Gore, Eng. Char. (1852), 127. There are two leading classes of London Bankers—the square-toed and the pointed.
1880. Morley, in Daily News, 26 March, 2/6. A system of square-toed humdrum.
Hence Square-toedness.
1846. Mrs. Gore, Eng. Char. (1852), 127. As regards this important distinction, however, neither square-toedness nor pointed-toedness is to be relied on.
