Cuban heel
1
7.2
- noun
:
tacón cubano
Examples
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They're Cuban heels.
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I even got to wear Cuban heels—my first high heels ever—over my grandmother's objections.
Fiction book (1997) -
She wore a stunning red dress with elegant Cuban heels that complemented her outfit perfectly.
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The designer showcased a new collection of shoes, all featuring a stylish Cuban heel for added flair.
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After trying on several pairs, she decided on the ones with the Cuban heel for a more sophisticated look.
How High
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound combines a nationality/style adjective 'Cuban' with the noun 'heel', so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes a type of heel associated with Cuban style or origin. This follows a common cross-linguistic pattern of naming fashion items by place/style, making the core meaning (a specific kind of shoe heel) immediately comprehensible even if fine-grained shape details require exposure.
Etymology
Cuban heel probably comes from a shoe style first seen in Cuban boots and dance shoes, where the heel was short, broad and slightly tapered at the back. Because that shape was common there, the name came to mean 'a broad, medium-height heel like that'.