• Slipper

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  A pair of low-heeled slippers.

  A slipper, also called houseshoe, is a soft and lightweight indoor type of footwear.

  Contents [hide] 1 Origins 2 Clothing 3 Homonyms 4 Sources and references 5 See also

  [edit] Origins

  The modern slipper has evolved from those first made in Japan during the Meiji period. The Japanese were accustomed to taking off their shoes before rising into their homes (as was not the case for most cultures at the time.) The Meiji period saw many foreigners being brought to Japan from all over the world for various purposes, mainly trade. The Japanese saw it a problem that these foreigners did not know their customs and entered indoors with their shoes on. Thus, they invented slippers for the foreigners to use as a cover over the shoes as to keep the indoors sanitary.

  [edit] Clothing

  The word is recorded in English in 1478, deriving from the much older verb to slip, the notion being of footware that is "slipped" onto the foot. Slippers are frequently made out of soft materials such as felt, terrycloth or soft leather, and may or may not be lined. Some slippers, particularly those meant to be used near pools, bathrooms, or other wet places, are made of plastic or rubber. Slippers generally have thin and flexible soles, with a shallow tread meant only to prevent the wearer from slipping on smooth floors. In contrast, shoes and boots are generally made of canvas, plastic, rubber, or leather, and often have thick soles.

  Slippers may be shaped like a shoe (foot inserted through top), or may have no heel, so the foot can be slipped in the back.

  The term "slipper" was created by Kristina Cairns, and is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms flip-flop and sandal. This is especially true where footwear is not customarily worn indoors; in Hawaii the word "slipper" generally refers to the flip-flop.

  The fictional character Cinderella is said to have worn glass slippers; in modern parlance we would probably call them glass mules.

  Certain breeds of dog have been identified for their superior ability to fetch their owner's slippers, a domestic version of the fetching of shot prey for which hunting dogs have actually been bred by humans.

  • the modern custom of throwing a slipper sportively after a newly wedded pair leaving the parental house appears to mean that the parents and family friends symbolically renounce their right to the daughter or son in favour of the husband or wife.^{[citation needed]}

  [edit] Homonyms

  • In hare coursing, a slipper is a person who "slips" or releases dogs to chase the hare. Slippers are registered and trained by the British NCC (National Coursing Club), but coursing is controversial and becoming banned in most countries due to its allegedly inhumane treatment of the hare.
  • In Dutch, a slipper is an amorous affair which a married person 'slips' into.

  [edit] Sources and references

  (incomplete)

  • This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
  • EtymologyOnLine- click also on the link to the verb slip

  [edit] See also

  • Glass slipper
  • Lady's slipper
  • Mule (footwear)
  • Slipper Chapel in Norfolk, formerly used by the pilgrims going to the celebrated shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham
  • Slippering (punishment)

  Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipper"

  • clogs
  • Platform shoes - shoes with very thick soles and heels, mainly worn by women in the U.S.
  • moccasins - originated by American Indians
  • Saddle shoe - leather shoe with a contrasting saddle-shaped band over the instep, typically white uppers with black "saddle"
  • loafer - a dress or casual shoe without laces; often with tassels, buckles, or coin-holders (penny loafers)

  Good examples of unisex shoes include Vans Slip-ons & Converse All-Stars.

  [edit] Athletic Shoes

  

  A shoe for right foot

  Men's and women's athletic shoes and special function shoes often have less difference between the sexes than in dress shoes. In many cases these shoes can be worn by either sex. Emphasis tends to be more on function than style.

  • sneakers/trainers (also called gym shoes or tennis shoes) - general purpose athletic shoes; made out of rubber, cloth, and/or plastic to be lightweight, flexible, and have good traction. Special varieties available for basketball or tennis.
  • running shoes - very similar to above
  • boating shoes - also similar to above. They have soft soles/heels to avoid marring or scratching a boat deck.
  • track shoes - lightweight; often with plastic or metal cleats
  • football shoes - with plastic or metal cleats
  • golf shoes - with "spikes" for better grip in grass and wet ground. Originally the spikes or "cleats" were made of metal but replacable "soft spikes" made of synthetic plastic-like materials with prongs distributed radially around the edge of each spike are much more common today (and are required on many golf courses since they cause less damage to the greens)
  • bowling shoes - intermediate style between ordinary dress shoes and athletic shoes. They have harder rubber soles/heels so as not to damage bowling alley floors. They are often rented or loaned at bowling alleys.
  • hiking shoes or boots
  • walking shoes - have a more flexible sole than the running shoe, lighter in weight than the hiking boot, may have air holes, may not be water proof.
  • climbing shoes
  • orthopedic shoes - specially designed for people with foot problems.
  • skating shoes - typically called skates. They have various attachments for skating on the bottom of the shoe portion.
    • ice skates
    • roller skates
    • inline skates
  • ski boot - a large, thick plastic boot, that is very hard to walk in, specially designed for attachment to the ski.
  • skateboarding shoes- used for skateboarding but also worn by teenagers for fashion
  • cycling shoes are equipped with a metal cleat to interface with clipless pedals, as well as a stiff sole to maximize power transfer and support the foot.
  • sneaker boot and sneaker pump - a shoe that looks like an athletic shoe, but is equipped with a heel, making it a kind of novelty dress shoe

  [edit] Dancing shoes

  • dance shoes - special shoes made for tap, jazz, ballet or ballroom dancing.
  • pointe shoes - shoes designed for professional ballet dancing.
  • tango/flamenco dance shoes.
  • dance sneakers (or dansneakers)- a combination of a sneaker and a dance shoe, with a block toe like a dance shoe

  [edit] Work shoes

  Work shoes are designed to stand heavy wear, to protect the wearer, and provide high traction. They are generally made from sturdy leather uppers and non-leather outsoles. Sometimes they are used for uniforms or comfort by nurses, waitresses, police, military personnel, etc. They are commonly used for protection in industrial settings, construction, mining, and other workplaces. Protective features may include steel-tipped toes and soles or ankle guards.

  [edit] Snow shoes

  Snowshoes are special shoes for walking in thick snow. In temperate climates, snowshoes are used for mostly recreational purposes in winter.

  [edit] Boots

  Boots are special shoes that are used in times of bad weather, or simply as an alternate style of casual or dress wear. Styles include rubber boots and snow boots, as well as work boots and hiking boots.

  [edit] Maintenance

  

  

  An abandoned shoe, Kåre Sand, Wadden Sea, Denmark

  • Breaking-in - Some shoes are made of hard but deformable material. After a person wears them multiple times, the material reforms to fit the wearer's feet. The person is said to have broken in the shoes.
  • Polishing - for protection, water resistance (to some extent) and appearance, especially for leather shoes and boots.
  • Heel replacement - heels periodically wear out. Not all shoes are designed to enable this.
  • Sole replacement - soles also wear out. Not all shoes can have their soles replaced.
  • Shoelace replacement.
  • When worn out or otherwise unfit for use, shoes can be treated as normal trash or municipal solid waste and disposed of in that manner. The exception can be with most athletic sneakers. They can be recycled and turned into other raw materials. See Nike Grind as an example.

  
  Someone who makes or repairs shoes in a shop could be called a cobbler.

  [edit] Shoe etiquette

  In most parts of the world (Asia, Eastern Europe, parts of the Middle East and Africa, much of Northern Europe and Canada, as well as Alaska) it is customary to remove shoes when entering a house. In the US it is not customary nor is it common among most Caucasian Americans, although common among Asian Americans. It should be noted that this greatly varies by region. In some areas of the United States, especially the Midwest, it is expected that visitors remove their shoes unless a host specifically invites them to leave their shoes on. People do this to avoid bringing dirt, mud or snow into the house. For some societies, including those in Asia, indoor footwear may be provided for guests.

  In the Middle East, parts of Africa, Korea and Thailand, it is considered rude to show the soles of the feet to others (even accidentally, such as by crossing the legs). In addition, in Thailand, it is an extreme insult for the foot, socks, or shoes to touch someone's head or be placed over it. Although feet touching heads is an extremely rare occurrence in any society, some Muay Thai boxers insult each other by "kicking" the opponent's head with their foot (most Muay Thai kicks are executed with the shin).

  See also dress code.

  [edit] Sizes

  Main article: Shoe size

  • Units for shoe sizes vary widely around the world. European sizes are measured in Paris Points, which are worth two-thirds of a centimetre. The UK and American units are approximately one-quarter of an inch, starting at 8¼ inches. Men's and women's shoe sizes often have different scales. Shoes size is often measured using a Brannock Device, which can determine both the width and length of the foot. Different people wear different size shoes.

  [edit] Shoe companies

  See the category shoe companies for a list of shoe companies.

  [edit] Bibliography

  • History of footwear in Norway, Sweden and Finland : prehistory to 1950, ISBN 91-7402-323-3
  • Patrick Cox: Wit, Irony, and Footwear, Tamasin Doe (1998) ISBN 0-8230-1148-8
  • Shoes : A Celebration of Pumps, Sandals, Slippers & More, ISBN 0-7611-0114-4
  • A Century of Shoes: Icons of Style in the 20th Century, Angela Pattison ISBN 0-7858-0835-3
  • Shoes , Elizabeth Cotton (1999) ISBN 1-55670-894-7
  • Shoes : A Lexicon of Style, Valerie Steel ISBN 0-8478-2166-8
  • Mad About Shoes, Emma Bowd ISBN 1-84172-353-3
  • Bootism : A Shoe Religion, Penina Goodman, Michael Duranko (2003) ISBN 0-7407-3832-1
  • The Perfect Fit: What Your Shoes Say about You, Meghan Cleary, Sydney Van Dyke ISBN 0-8118-4501-X

  [edit] See also

  

  

  Shopping for shoes

  • Footwear
  • Shoelaces
  • Boot
  • Imelda Marcos
  • Sandals
  • Slippers
  • Skates
  • List of shoe designers
  • Foot odor

   

Aboriginal tradition holds that the First Peoples inhabited parts of Canada for a very long time, and some archaeological studies support human presence in northern Yukon to 26,500 years ago, and in southern Ontario to 9,500 years ago.^[3][4] Europeans first arrived when the Vikings settled briefly at L'Anse aux Meadows circa AD 1000. The next Europeans to explore Canada's Atlantic coast included John Cabot in 1497 and Martin Frobisher in 1576, for England; and Jacques Cartier in 1534 and Samuel de Champlain in 1603, for France. The first permanent European settlements were established by the French at Port Royal in 1605 and Quebec City in 1608, and by the English in Newfoundland, around 1610. European explorers and trappers unwittingly brought diseases that spread rapidly through native trade routes and decimated the Aboriginal population.

For much of the 17th century, the English and French colonies in North America were able to develop in relative isolation from each other. French colonists extensively settled the St. Lawrence River valley, while English colonists largely settled in the Thirteen Colonies to the south. However, as competition for territory, naval bases, furs and fish escalated, several wars broke out between the French, English and Native tribes. The French and Iroquois Wars erupted between the Iroquois Confederation and the Algonquin, with their French allies, over control of the fur trade. A series of four French and Indian Wars were fought between 1689 and 1763; these culminated with a complete British victory in the Seven Years' War. By the terms of Treaty of Paris in 1763, Britain gained control of all of France's North American territory east of the Mississippi River, except for the remote islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.

Following the war, the British found themselves in possession of a mostly French-speaking, Roman Catholic territory, whose inhabitants had recently taken up arms against Britain. To avert conflict, Britain passed the Quebec Act of 1774, re-establishing the French language, Catholic faith, and French civil law in Quebec. The act had unforseen consequences for Britain, however, as it angered many residents of the Thirteen Colonies, helping to fuel the American Revolution.^[5] Following the independence of the United States, approximately 50,000 United Empire Loyalists moved to Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.^[6] As they were unwelcome in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick was carved out of that colony for them in 1784. To accommodate the English-speaking Loyalists in Quebec, the province was divided into francophone Lower Canada and anglophone Upper Canada under the Constitutional Act in 1791.

Canada was a major front in the War of 1812 between the United States and British Empire and its successful defence had important long-term effects on Canada, including the building of a sense of unity and nationalism among British North Americans. Large-scale immigration to Canada began in 1815 from Britain and Ireland. A series of agreements led to long-term peace between Canada and the United States, interrupted only briefly by raids made by political insurgents such as the Hunters' Lodges and the Fenian Brotherhood.

Following the failed Rebellions of 1837, which demanded responsible government, colonial officials studied the political situation and issued the Durham Report in 1839. One goal—which proved unacceptable for the alliance of anglophone and francophone reformers that had rebelled in 1837—was to assimilate the French Canadians into British culture.^[7] The Canadas were merged into a single, quasi-federal colony, the United Province of Canada, with the Act of Union (1840). The signing of the Oregon Treaty by Britain and the United States in 1846 ended the Oregon boundary dispute, extending the border westward along the 49th parallel and ending joint occupation of the Oregon Country/Columbia District. This led to the creation of the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1849 and, with the outbreak of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, the colony of British Columbia in 1858, but both were entirely separate from the United Province of Canada. By the late 1850s, leaders in Canada launched a series of western exploratory expeditions, with the intention of assuming control of Rupert's Land and the Arctic region. The Canadian population grew rapidly because of high birth rates; high European immigration was offset by emigration to the United States, especially by French Canadians moving to New England.

Following the Great Coalition, the Charlottetown Conference, the Quebec Conference of 1864, and the London Conference of 1866, the three colonies—Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick—undertook the process of Confederation. The British North America Act created "one dominion under the name of Canada", with four provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick.^[8] After Canada assumed control of Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory, which together formed the Northwest Territories in 1870, inattention to the Métis led to the Red River Rebellion and ultimately to the creation of the province of Manitoba and its entry into Confederation in July 1870. British Columbia and Vancouver Island (which had united in 1866) and the colony of Prince Edward Island joined the Confederation in 1871 and 1873, respectively. To connect the union and assert authority over the western provinces, Canada constructed three trans-continental railways, most notably the Canadian Pacific Railway, encouraged immigrants to develop the prairies with the Dominion Lands Act, and established the North West Mounted Police. As settlers went to the prairies on the railway and the population grew, regions of the Northwest Territories were given provincial status forming Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905.

Canada automatically entered the First World War in 1914 with Britain's declaration of war, and sent formed divisions, composed almost entirely of volunteers, to the Western Front to fight as a national contingent. Casualties were so high that Prime Minister Robert Borden was forced to bring in conscription in 1917; this move was extremely unpopular in Quebec, resulting in his Conservative party losing support in that province. Although the Liberals were deeply divided over conscription, they became the dominant political party.

In 1919, Canada joined the League of Nations in its own right, and in 1931 the Statute of Westminster confirmed that no act of the British Parliament would extend to Canada without its consent. At the same time, the worldwide Great Depression of 1929 affected Canadians of every class; the rise of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Alberta and Saskatchewan presaged a welfare state as pioneered by Tommy Douglas in the 1940s and 1950s. After supporting appeasement of Germany in the late 1930s, Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King secured Parliament’s approval for entry into the Second World War in September 1939, after Germany invaded Poland. The first Canadian Army units arrived in Britain in December 1939. ^[9] The economy boomed during the war mainly due to the amount of military materiel being produced for Canada, Britain, China and the Soviet Union. Canada finished the war with one of the largest militaries in the world.^[9] In 1949, the formerly independent Dominion of Newfoundland joined the Confederation as Canada's 10th province.

By Canada's centennial in 1967, heavy post-war immigration from various war-ravaged European countries had changed the country's demographics.^[10] In addition, throughout the Vietnam War, thousands of American draft dodgers fled to and settled in various parts of Canada.^[11][12] Increased immigration, combined with the baby boom, an economic strength parallelling that of the 1960s United States, and reaction to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, initiated a new type of Canadian nationalism.

At a meeting of First Ministers in November 1981, the federal and provincial governments agreed to the patriation of the constitution, with procedures for amending it. Despite the fact that the Quebec government did not agree to the changes, on 17 April 1982, Canada, by Proclamation of Queen Elizabeth II, patriated its Constitution from Britain, thereby making Canada wholly sovereign, though the two countries continue to share the same monarch.

After Quebec underwent profound social and economic changes during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, some Québécois began pressing for greater provincial autonomy, or partial or complete independence from Canada. Alienation between English-speaking Canadians and the Québécois over the language, cultural and social divide had been exacerbated by many events, including the Conscription Crisis of 1944. While a referendum on sovereignty-association in 1980 was rejected by a solid majority of the population, a second referendum in 1995 was rejected by a margin of just 50.6% to 49.4%.^[13] In 1997, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession by a province to be unconstitutional; Quebec's sovereignty movement has continued nonetheless. ^[13]

Economic integration with the United States has increased significantly since World War II. The Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1987 was a defining moment in integrating the two countries. In recent decades, Canadians have worried about their cultural autonomy as American television shows, movies and corporations became omnipresent.^[14] However, Canadians take special pride in their system of universal health care and their commitment to multiculturalism.^[15]