footage
Pluralfootages (some meanings)
- 1A quantity of film or video that has been shot to record an event or scene.
The documentary relied on archival footage from the 1960s.
Investigators examined the footage frame by frame for any clues.
Note
Film was once reckoned by its length, and the word still shows it: foot as a unit of length plus the suffix -age. Treat it as a mass noun, as in some footage, footage of the riot or archival footage. The plural footages does appear, as in N. C. Asthana and Anjali Nirmal's Urban Terrorism (2009), but the uncountable form is the usual one and the safer choice.
- 2The extent of something, expressed as a measurement in feet.
The contractor estimated the total footage of pipe required for the job.
Square footage largely determines a property's listing price.
Similarlength
Note
Here the plural is perfectly ordinary. The Southern Lumberman of 1965 has contractors buying pine "in greater footages per order", and John Burder's 16mm Film Cutting (1976) has editors marking starting and finishing footages. In the cutting room this measure in feet locates the sound against the recorded-film meaning. In property talk, square footage measures area, while linear footage measures length along a single line.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "foot", the unit of length, combined with the suffix "-age".