big toe
- noun
- /bɪɡ toʊ/
- The doctor examined my big toe to determine if it was broken.
If you hurt your big, if you break your big toe, your balance is done.
- If you hurt your big, if you break your big toe, your balance is done.
- And his two of his toes on his left foot, not the big toe, but the two next to the big toe.
- And three, The whole time you said your case, your big toe was curled.
- Like I could wear them and be OK, but I can feel my big toe and like my second to last toe.
- Well, I wake up to this new sensation in my left big toe.
- And she stares at her toe and she says move like move your big toe.
- Here's when you put your big toe forward and your heel backwards and hear how you stop stumbling.
Examples
-
I marked distances by using my big toe to draw lines in the sand.
Fiction book (1995) -
After stubbing my foot, I realized my big toe was throbbing with pain.
-
And then, of course, the big toe is the biggest.
-
If you hurt your big, if you break your big toe, your balance is done.
-
I mean, my right big toe is a little cold.
-
Lift up your big toe.
-
The nail on my big toe never grew back.
-
I pushed the On button with my big toe and waited.
Fiction book (1992) -
I've got a blister on my big toe.
-
"I remember tying and untying a gauze bandage on my big toe," my mother went on.
Fiction book (1991)
Synonyms
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the largest and innermost toe' is directly and compositionally derived from 'big' (large) modifying 'toe' (a digit), following a standard adjective + noun pattern. This anatomical label is cross‑linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The noun big toe is a simple, descriptive name: big because it is the largest toe and toe because it is one of the toes on the foot. Because it is both the biggest and at the inside edge of the foot, the term refers to the 'largest and innermost toe'.