Footwear Definitions — shoes, boots and footwear terms from Apparel Search
Sneakers are footwear of flexible material, typically featuring a sole made of rubber. Sneakers were originally sporting apparel, but are today worn much more widely as casual footwear, and are now very popular, especially with young people; the British English equivalent is trainer.
Sneakers are
footwear
of flexible material, typically
featuring a sole made of
rubber. Sneakers were originally
sporting apparel, but are
today worn much more widely
as casual footwear. They
are now very popular, especially
with young people. The British
English equivalent of "sneaker"
is "trainer" in
its modern meaning, however
the traditional "sneaker"
(pictured) is closer to
the British "plimsoll".
Etymology
The term "sneaker" itself was first used in 1916 by the US Rubber Company for the Keds brand, because rubber soles made the shoes less squeaky.
The British English term "trainer" derives from "training shoe".
Popular Brands
Popular brands include Adidas, Converse, New Balance, Nike, PUMA and Reebok.
Learn about collectible sneakers in our footwear terminology section.
Invention
The first "sneaker" was invented in 1893. It was made of canvas and was invented so boaters would not have to wear dress shoes when they were on deck.
More about sneakers.
Learn about performance footwear.
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Most footwear names describe construction; sneaker describes a sound, or rather the absence of one. Leather soles squeaked and clicked on hard floors, and the rubber sole's silence was a genuine novelty in 1916, when the United States Rubber Company launched the name for its Keds brand: shoes quiet enough to sneak in. The British took the functional word instead, trainer, from training shoe, and kept plimsoll for the traditional canvas shoe that the sneaker most resembled. The 1893 first sneaker, a canvas shoe made so boaters would not have to wear dress shoes on deck, shows the design settling early: a light upper that could get wet, a rubber sole that gripped a deck and left no marks, and laces to hold it all at working tension. Everything since, air cushions, engineered mesh, carbon plates, is refinement layered on that boating formula.
The sneaker's cultural career runs in two stages. First it escaped the sports it was built for, becoming everyday casual footwear and a uniform of youth, popular especially with young people precisely because it signalled informality. Then, as brands signed athletes and celebrities to endorse signature models, individual releases acquired names, colourways and release dates of their own, and a collector market followed, with its own vocabulary for condition, rarity and authenticity, covered in the footwear terminology coverage of collectible sneakers. That market changes how sneakers are bought and kept: pairs are stored boxed, worn sparingly or not at all, and resold, behaviour no one applies to ordinary shoes. The working sneaker did not disappear under the collectible one. Performance footwear still develops the same flexible, rubber-soled design for running, court sports and training, and the casual majority still buys sneakers the way the name promises, as the comfortable, quiet default shoe of daily life. Fitting still matters more than branding: a sneaker worn for exercise should hold the heel, leave a thumb's width at the toes and match the foot's arch, while a casual pair asks only that it stay comfortable through a day of standing and walking, the test the design has passed since 1893.
The term sneaker was first used in 1916 by the US Rubber Company for the Keds brand, because rubber soles made the shoes less squeaky, quiet enough to sneak in. The name is an advertisement that became the category.
The first sneaker was invented in 1893. It was made of canvas and was invented so boaters would not have to wear dress shoes when they were on deck, an origin the rubber sole, gripping a wet deck without marking it, explains.
Popular brands include Adidas, Converse, New Balance, Nike, PUMA and Reebok. The casual sneaker market grew from shoes worn and endorsed by athletes and celebrities, and collectible sneakers now have a terminology and market of their own.