A Plimsoll shoe is an early type of training shoe with a canvas upper and rubber sole, developed as beachwear in the 1830s by the Liverpool Rubber Company (later to become Dunlop), was first called the 'sand shoe', and in the 1870s acquired the nickname 'plimsoll' because the colored horizontal band joining the upper to the sole resembled the Plimsoll line on a ship's hull.

As it was commonly used for corporal punishment in the Commonwealth, where it was the typical gym shoe (part of the school uniform), Plimsoll is also a metonymical synonym for a Slippering.