a leathern cover or defence for the leg, used to keep that part of the body more firm, and to defend it from the injuries of the weather. Boots seem to have taken their name from the resemblance they bear to a sort of jacks or leathern bottles formerly in use, called botte in Latin, and in the old French boute. The Chinese have a kind of boots made of silk or fine stuff, lined with cotton, about an inch thick, which they commonly wear at home. This people, in fact, never stir out of doors without their boots; and their scrupulousness in this respect is the more remarkable, since they are always carried in chairs. The boot was much used by the ancient soldiery, foot as well as horse. By the ancient Romans it was called ocrea; by the writers of the middle ages greca, gambieria, bainbergia, bembargia or benbargia. It was at first made of leather, and afterwards of brass or iron, and was proof against both cuts and thrusts. Hence the Greeks are denominated brazen-booted and well-booted by Homer.

Boot was likewise a kind of torture for criminals, to extort a confession, by means of a boot, made to squeeze the leg violently, and occasion intolerable pain. (See Wodrow's History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland.)