French heel
- noun
- /frɛntʃ hiːl/
:
tacón francés
- She wore a beautiful dress with French heels that made her look elegant.
Examples
-
At the party, many women complemented her French heels for their stylish design.
-
The fashion show featured models showcasing French heels in various colors and styles.
-
We talked for hours on her brick front stoop about the strange things people did and where pets went when they were dead, until she graduated into junior high and started to wear nylons and French heels, and smelled like Campbell's soup when it was warm.
Fiction book (2001)
Synonyms
4
4.4
A very thin, high part under women's shoes that ends in a small point
3
5.0
A very high, thin part at the back of a woman's shoe that ends in a small point
The thin raised back of a woman's shoe is narrow at base, wider in middle, narrow at top
How High
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a fairly high, narrow heel' is directly derivable from combining 'French' (an attributive label indicating style or origin) with 'heel' (the shoe component); it simply names a type or style of heel rather than an idiomatic meaning. This adjectival-noun composition is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words can readily infer the intended sense.
Etymology
French heel may come from old French shoe fashion, where shoe makers made a fairly high, narrow heel that curved in at the back to give a graceful look. So, the name now means 'a fairly high, narrow heel often slightly curved inward at the back'.