faint footstep
1
4.2
- noun
- /feɪnt ˈfʊtˌstɛp/
- As he entered the deserted room, the only sound was a faint footstep echoing in the silence.
Examples
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( Faint footsteps )
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In the quiet night, she heard a faint footstep behind her as she walked home alone.
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The children tiptoed across the hall, trying to avoid making a faint footstep that might wake their parents.
Synonyms
102
1.0
The sound made by someone walking
8
6.2
The sound a person's steps make when they walk
8
1.0
The sound a foot or shoe makes on the ground
How Loud
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'faint' (very slight in intensity) with 'footstep' (the sound produced by a foot contacting the ground), yielding a quiet or soft step sound. This adjective+noun compositional pattern is straightforward and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words should be able to infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Faint footstep shows a simple picture: faint means very quiet and footstep is the sound of a foot on the floor, like someone walking on tiptoe or far away. So it means 'a quiet or soft sound made by a person's step'.