Footlamps

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Lights set in a row along the front edge of a theatre stage, shining upward to illuminate the performers
2. A line of lamps placed at the forward edge of a stage floor to light actors from below
3. Stage lighting fixtures mounted in a row across the front of the platform so performers are lit from beneath

Etymology: Footlamps are the row of lights set along the front edge of a stage, at floor level, that throw light up onto the performers. The term is a plain compound of "foot" and "lamp", and its sense comes straight from the theatre's old lighting arrangement: before electric spotlights, the stage's main illumination came from lamps positioned at the feet of the actors, at the front of the stage. "Foot" in this sense refers to the front or lower edge of the stage, a usage that goes back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when theatres lit their stages from the front floor edge. The word is attested in English from the nineteenth century, when gas and then electric lighting made such rows of lamps a standard feature of the proscenium stage. It is a technical coinage rather than an old word, so there is no older meaning to recover. Its history is simply that of the lighting it names, and the lights themselves were the reason the term existed.

Synonyms: footlight