From time to time I point out annoying trends in language. My bugaboo today is the phrase “step foot.” This term has only become common recently. See the graph from Google N-grams below. It’s only in the last 20 years or so that it’s been popular.

So what’s wrong with it? It’s redundant. The word step includes the meaning of foot. You don’t step with your head or shoulder or belly button. It’s like saying “bite teeth” into something or “think brain” of an idea. When I was growing up I often heard people use the term “set foot,” which is fine because you can set lots of things, so foot is needed. They might also use the word step by itself, e.g. “When I step into the room…” They mean the same and make grammatical sense. I suspect that some people with poor language skills got confused as to which to use and simply conflated the two to make “step foot.”

Of course, people know what you mean if you use “step foot” but you’ll sound more intelligent if you say set foot or just step. That’s my language lesson for today.