SABOT (sa-BOH)
A
wooden shoe worn in various European countries
Common clues:
Wooden
shoe; Clunky shoe; Cousin of a clog; Clog kin; Dutch
shoe
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
once a year
Video: The
Clog Dance
A clog is a type of footwear traditionally worn by workers as protective clothing in factories, mines and farms.
There
are various types of clog. Traditional clogs are shoes or sandals
made predominantly out of wood, and are associated with the
Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Northern England, Galicia,
Lithuania and Sweden. They can also be a type of heavy boot or
shoe with sides, uppers and typically thick wooden soles, and may
have steel toecaps and/or steel reinforcing inserts in the
undersides of the soles.
A clog can also be a special kind of shoe worn while clog-dancing (clogging). They are similar to tap shoes, but the taps are free to click against each other, therefore producing a different sound than tap shoes.
Nowadays, "clogs" also mean comfortable slip-on shoes. They are often made out of leather, but some clogs keep the bottom part out of wood. All-rubber clogs are often worn while gardening, because they can be easily hosed off and allowed to air-dry. Some clogs come with heels, and are usually distinguished from mules by their higher vamp. It is commonly accepted that men and women can wear low-heeled or high-heeled clogs
The French wooden shoe or clog (sabot) was, in the 18th and 19th century, associated with the lower classes. During this period, the years of the Industrial Revolution, the word sabotage gained currency. Allegedly derived from sabot, sabotage described the actions of disgruntled workers who willfully damaged workplace machinery by throwing their sabots into the works. However, according to some accounts, sabot-clad workers were simply considered less productive than others who had switched to leather shoes, roughly equating the term "sabotage" with "inefficiency".
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Clog_(shoe)".
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