Footwear Definitions — shoes, boots and footwear terms from Apparel Search
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. First called the sand shoe, it acquired the nickname plimsoll in the 1870s from the band joining upper to sole.
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.
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The plimsoll began as leisure equipment. In the 1830s the Liverpool Rubber Company, the firm that later became Dunlop, combined a canvas upper with a rubber sole to make beachwear, the sand shoe: a shoe that could get wet, dry quickly and cost little. The design outgrew the beach because it was the first cheap shoe built for movement rather than for protection or status, and institutions noticed. Across the Commonwealth the plimsoll became the typical gym shoe, issued as part of the school uniform for physical education, light enough for running and climbing apparatus and uniform enough that no pupil's pair outshone another's. That school career left a mark on the language: because the gym shoe was the instrument of a familiar punishment, plimsoll is also a metonymical synonym for a slippering in Commonwealth usage, a meaning no marketing department would have chosen but every schoolchild of the era understood.
The name is a visual joke from the age of steam. The Plimsoll line, named for Samuel Plimsoll, is the load line painted on a ship's hull marking how low the vessel may safely sit in the water. When the canvas shoe acquired, in the 1870s, a coloured horizontal band where the upper joins the sole, the band sat exactly where the load line sits on a hull, and the nickname transferred. The comparison stuck because it was accurate about more than looks: like the line, the band marked a limit, the point below which the shoe is sole and above which it is upper. In the family tree of athletic footwear the plimsoll is the trunk. The American sneaker of 1916 added the quiet rubber sole's marketing story, and the modern trainer added engineered cushioning and sport-specific design, but the formula both inherited, canvas or light upper, flat rubber sole, lace-up front, was worked out in this beach shoe of the 1830s. Surviving pairs in white canvas remain the standard summer shoe in much of Britain, sold under the name the ships gave them.
In the 1870s the shoe acquired the nickname plimsoll because the coloured horizontal band joining the upper to the sole resembled the Plimsoll line on a ship's hull, the load line that shows how deeply a ship may sit in the water.
The plimsoll was developed as beachwear in the 1830s by the Liverpool Rubber Company, later Dunlop, and was first called the sand shoe. Canvas and rubber suited the seaside: light, cheap and unbothered by getting wet.
The plimsoll is the sneaker's British ancestor: the traditional sneaker is closer to the British plimsoll, while the modern trainer descends from later, more engineered athletic shoes. In Commonwealth schools the plimsoll was the typical gym shoe and part of the school uniform.