GALLIC SHOE

The word galosh today refers to a type of rubber overshoe, but when the term was first used in 1374, it referred to a type of wood-soled leather clog. Back then, it was spelled kaloge, and sometimes took the forms galoche, galache, galege, galage, galoss, galoach, goloschoo, goloshoe, and colloshoe; of course, galosh prevailed. That comes from Old French galoche, which has an uncertain origin. The most widely accepted theory is that it derives from the Latin phrase gallicula solea, meaning "Gallic shoe" , but there are plausible contentions that it may trace to Old French gallette, meaning "flat round cake", or to Ancient Greek kalopodion, the term for a shoemaker's mold of a foot. That last one would trace to the words for "wood" (kalon) and "foot" (pous​).