Plimsoll (shoe)



A plimsoll, also spelled plimsole, or pump (also known as a gym shoe or a sandshoe ), is a light sports shoe with a canvas upper and flat rubber sole.

The shoe originated in the United Kingdom, there called a "sand shoe", acquiring the nickname "plimsoll" in the 1870s. This name arose, according to Nicholette Jones's book The Plimsoll Sensation, because the coloured horizontal band joining the upper to the sole resembled the Plimsoll line on a ship's hull, or because, just like the line on a ship, if water got above the line of the rubber sole, the wearer would get wet.



In the UK, plimsolls are commonly worn for school indoor physical education. Regional terms are common: In Northern Ireland and Scotland, they may be known as "gutties"; "sannies" (from 'sand shoe') is used in Scotland. In parts of Edinburgh and Midlothian, they are known as "rubbers" or "gym rubbers", owing to their rubber soles and the need to wear them in the school gym hall. In London, the home counties, much of the West Midlands, the West Riding of Yorkshire, and northwest of England, they are known as "pumps". In parts of the West Country and Wales, they are known as "daps". There is a widespread belief that "daps" is taken from a factory sign—"Dunlop Athletic Plimsoles", which was called "the DAP factory". However, this seems unlikely, as the first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary of "dap" for a rubber-soled shoe is a March-1924 use in the Western Daily Press newspaper; Dunlop did not acquire the Liverpool Rubber Company (as part of the merger with the Macintosh group of companies) until 1925.



In Hong Kong, white plimsolls functioned as cheap athletic shoes from the 1970s to the 1990s. Due to naming taboo (in Cantonese, 鞋 (shoes), sounds identical to 骸 (corpse)) and their color and shape resembling noodlefish, they were commonly known as baahk faahn yú(白飯魚). A pair typically cost around $15 HKD (around $2 USD) and was the designated gym class shoe in school. However, due to the canvas being thin and thus unable to protect the ankles and lacking support for the foot arch, plimsolls were eventually phased out and replaced by more sturdy sneakers