athlete's foot
- noun
- /ˈæθlitɪz fʊt/
- Athlete's foot, also known as Tinea Pedis, is a common fungal infection that occurs mainly in warmer weather when feet are more likely to be sweaty and moist.
- a case of athlete's foot
- athlete's foot fungus
- athlete's foot infection
Examples
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Anybody can get Tinea Pedis or Athlete's foot.
Blog text (19) -
This weather up here really plays hell with my athlete's foot.
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A common sign of athlete's foot is itchy skin between the toes.
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If you have athlete's foot, you might notice scaling and redness on your feet.
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Many people get athlete's foot from walking on damp floors in public places.
Synonyms
An illness a fungus causes in the body, often on the skin or nails
A skin infection on the feet that a fungus causes, often between the toes
A skin infection caused by a fungus, often in warm, wet areas under clothing
Surface Forms
Morphology
athlete's + foot
The phrase transparently combines 'athlete's' + 'foot', so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer it denotes a foot problem associated with athletes (this compositional logic is common cross-linguistically). However the specific conventional meaning — a fungal infection of the skin between the toes — is a lexicalized medical sense that is not fully predictable from the parts alone, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Athlete's foot comes from the idea that athletes often got a skin problem on their feet because they used wet, crowded showers and shared shoes. The warm, wet places let a fungus spread, so the name now means 'a fungal infection of the skin on the feet'.