set foot » step foot
Spotted in the wild:
- Distance education student will step foot on campus for first time at commencement. (Indiana State University press release, Dec. 11, 2002)
- I pray my dream can come true, and I can one day step foot on that beautiful campus as not just a spectator-but as a student. (University of Notre Dame Office of Undergraduate Admissions, Sep. 10, 2003)
- Our staff is here to walk you through every step of the way until you step foot on campus in the Fall of 2005. (Aurora University newsletter, Sep. 2004)
- I had stopped going down to the Café Wha? in the afternoons. Never stepped foot in there again. (Bob Dylan: Chronicles (Vol. One), Pocket Books (Simon & Schuster UK), 2004, chapter 1, p. 18)
[2005/11/04, CW: Added the quote from Bob Dylan’s autobiography, which was contributed by Ross Howard in the Usenet group alt.usage.english.]
[BZ: Marked questionable, as participants in the a.u.e thread report that “step foot in/on” is an unremarkable idiom in a number of English dialects. It is also attested in the Oxford English Dictionary back to the 19th century:
]1864 R. B. KIMBALL Was he Successful? II. i. 182 When Hiram stepped foot in the metropolis.
1880 S. G. W. BENJAMIN Troy I. iv. 26 (Funk) Calchas announced that the first man who stepped foot on the enemy’s soil was doomed at once to die.
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