Podiatry

The story of the word

American practitioners built the word early in the twentieth century to replace chiropody, which had drifted into meaning hand and foot alike and sounded like a trade rather than a profession. The switch was as much politics as language, and it took decades for the older term to fade from British use. The same πούς turns up in octopus, eight-foot, and in tripod.

How it travelled

Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English

First recorded

20th century