footnote — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A short piece of text, often numbered, placed at the bottom of a printed page, that adds a comment, citation, reference etc, to a designated part of the main text.

   Examples

   consult the footnotes for more details

   More examples (1)

   Above all, the 48-page timetables of the new service, which have been distributed free at every station in the scheme, are a model to the rest of B.R. For the first time on British Railways, so far as we are aware, a substantial timetable has been produced, not only without a single footnote but also devoid of all wearisome asterisks, stars, letter suffixes and other hieroglyphics.

2. An event of lesser importance than some larger event to which it is related.

   Usage

   • broadly

   Synonyms

   asterisk

   Examples

   a mere footnote in history

   If we are another footnote to Plato, Plato was himself already a footnote to still earlier footnotes, in an endless chain of footnotes to footnotes

   More examples (2)

   In that context Scotland's fate is a modest element, a symptom of wider fragmentation of the current global order, a footnote to the fall of empire and the Berlin Wall, important to us and punchdrunk neighbours like France and Italy, a mere curiosity to emerging titans like Brazil.

   Now, with her new book Beyond the Wall, Hoyer is seeking to retrieve the GDR from being written off as a chilling “footnote in German history”, a miserably grey country synonymous with unflinching totalitarianism.

3. A qualification to the import of something.

Verb

1. To add footnotes to a text.

   Synonyms

   annotate

   Related words

   marginaliareference mark

   Examples

   She does everything she does with a kind of terrifying thoroughness, footnoted and bibliographied, as it were, down to the smallest detail.

Noun

1. a printed note placed below the text on a printed page

   Synonyms

   footer

   Broader terms

   noteannotationnotation

Verb

1. add explanatory notes to or supply with critical comments

   Synonyms

   annotate

   Broader terms

   writecomposepenindite

   Examples

   The scholar annotated the early edition of a famous novel