Foot vs Feet
Foot and Feet are two words that are often confused when it comes to their usage. In the measurement of height the word ‘foot’ is used instead of the word ‘feet’ as in the sentence, ‘My brother is six foot’. Note that such a kind of usage is done in the conversational style and not in the written style. In the written style the word ‘feet’ may be used as in the sentence ‘My brother is six feet tall’.
The word ‘feet’ is generally used as plural of the word ‘foot’. The expressions such as ‘100-feet road’ and ’40-feet cable’ are often heard in the conversational style. The word ‘foot’ on the other hand is used in singular form as in the expression ’45 dollars per square-foot’. The usage ’45 dollars per square-feet’ is wrong.
The word ‘foot’ is used compounded words such as bare-footed, large-footed at the like. In such expressions it is used as a part of an adjective. You can see that the words bare-footed, large-footed and the like are adjectives in expressions, ‘bare-footed person’, ‘large-footed animal’ and the like.
On the other hand the word ‘feet’ is used where there are words between the noun and the adjective as in the sentence ‘The monster was eight feet tall’. Here the word ‘feet’ is used between the noun ‘eight’ and the adjective ‘tall’. On the other hand the word ‘foot’ is used as part of an adjective as in the sentence ‘He was an eight foot demon’. In this sentence ‘eight-foot’ is used as adjective describing the noun, namely, the demon.
It is interesting to note that the word ‘foot’ is used mostly in hyphenated forms whereas the word ‘feet’ is used both in the hyphenated form as well as in the noun forms. This is also an important difference between the two words, namely, ‘foot’ and ‘feet’.