The term pump first popped up in 1550 in England, where male servants sported the style. It is said that the noise they made while wearing the loose-fitting shoes resembled the sound of a water pump.
The word sneaker entered the language in the 1870s; the rubber soles made the shoes quiet and therefore “sneaky.”
The modern usage of stiletto, a Renaissance-era Italian word for an assassin’s narrow-bladed knife, made its debut in 1953. The word turned out to be especially appropriate, because the shoes’ pointy heels were murder on wooden floors.
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