Boot
Middle English: from Old Norse bóti or its source, Old French bote, of unknown ultimate origin; boot1 (sense 2 of the verb) is from bootstrap (sense 2 of the noun).
wiktionary
From Middle English boote, bote(“shoe”), from Old French bote(“a high, thick shoe”). Of obscure origin, but probably related to Old French bot(“club-foot”), bot(“fat, short, blunt”), from Old Frankish *butt, from Proto-Germanic *buttaz, *butaz(“cut off, short, numb, blunt”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewt-, *bʰewd-(“to strike, push, shock”). Compare Old Norse butt(“stump”), Low German butt(“blunt, plump”), Old English bytt(“small piece of land”), buttuc(“end”). More at buttock.
From Middle English boote, bote, bot, from Old English bōt(“help, relief, advantage, remedy; compensation for an injury or wrong; (peace) offering, recompense, amends, atonement, reformation, penance, repentance”), from Proto-Germanic *bōtō(“atonement, improvement”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰed-(“good”). Akin to Old Norse bót(“bettering, remedy”) (Danish bod), Gothic 𐌱𐍉𐍄𐌰( bōta), German Buße. Doublet of bote (a borrowing from Middle English).
Clipping of bootstrap.
From bootleg(“to make or sell illegally”), by shortening
etymonline
boot (n.1)
"covering for the foot and lower leg," early 14c., from Old French bote "boot" (12c.), with corresponding words in Provençal, Spanish, and Medieval Latin, all of unknown origin, perhaps from a Germanic source. Originally of riding boots only.
From c. 1600 as "fixed external step of a coach." This later was extended to "low outside compartment used for stowing luggage" (1781) and hence the transferred use, of motor vehicles, in Britain, where American English has trunk (n.1).
Boot-black "person who shines boots and shoes" is from 1817; boot-jack "implement to hold a boot by the heel while the foot is drawn from it" is from 1793. Boot Hill, U.S. frontier slang for "cemetery" (1893, in a Texas panhandle context) probably is an allusion to dying with one's boots on. An old Dorsetshire word for "half-boots" was skilty-boots [Halliwell, Wright].
boot (n.2)
"profit, use," Old English bot "help, relief, advantage; atonement," literally "a making better," from Proto-Germanic *boto (see better (adj.)). Compare Old Frisian bote "fine, penalty, penance, compensation," German Buße "penance, atonement," Gothic botha "advantage, usefulness, profit." Now mostly in phrase to boot (Old English to bote), indicating something thrown in by one of the parties to a bargain as an additional consideration.
boot (v.1)
"to kick, drive by kicking," 1877, American English, from boot (n.1). Earlier "to beat with a boot" (a military punishment), 1802. Generalized sense of "eject, kick (out)" is from 1880. To give (someone) the boot "dismiss, kick out" is from 1888. Related: Booted; booting.
boot (v.2)
1975, transitive, "start up (a computer) by causing an operating system to load in the memory," 1975, from bootstrap (v.), a 1958 derived verb from bootstrap (n.) in the computer sense "fixed sequence of instructions to load the operating system of a computer" (1953). This is from the notion of the first-loaded program pulling itself (and the rest) up by the bootstrap, an old expression for "better oneself by rigorous, unaided effort." Intransitive, of a computer operating system, from 1983. Related: Booted; booting.
