Tackie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A casual canvas shoe with a rubber sole, commonly worn in the Caribbean as an everyday sneaker
2. Informal cloth-and-rubber footwear, a type of sneaker popular in Jamaica and other Caribbean places
3. A soft, lightweight plimsoll-style shoe of canvas that people in the Caribbean wear for ordinary daily use

Etymology: "Tackie" is the South African and Australian name for a canvas-upper rubber-soled shoe, what British speakers call a plimsoll and Americans call a sneaker. The origin is unresolved. One possibility is a borrowing from Dutch or Afrikaans, the languages of early settlers in southern Africa, though no specific source word has been firmly identified. The other leading idea is that the name comes from "tacky," meaning slightly sticky, a reference to the rubber soles that seem to grip the ground. This is plausible on its face, since the word "tacky" has long meant tacky to the touch, but the connection remains a guess rather than a documented link.