Etymology
The British English term "trainer" derives from "training shoe." There is evidence that this usage of "trainer" originated as a genericized tradename for a make of training shoe made in 1968 by Gola.
Plimsolls (General English) are indoor athletic shoes, and are also called Ryan's Spongies or sneakers or matthews squares in American English and daps in Wenglish and West Country English. The word "sneaker" is often attributed to Henry Nelson McKinney, an advertising agent for N. W. Ayer & Son, who, in 1917, coined the term because the rubber sole made the shoe stealthy. However, the word was in use at least as early as 1887, as the Boston Journal of Education made reference to "sneakers" as "the name boys give to tennis shoes".
Read more about this topic: Athletic Shoe
Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)