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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