What occation do you use "foot the bill"?

Question

What occation do you use "foot the bill"?
Do you sometimes use "pay" or "hand" instead of "foot"?
is it casual???
I often heard this phrase .
I am not sure.
please give me expample situation with explanations.
do you sometimes use it ?
many in thanks.

Answer 1

an example: Should I make the guy foot the bill on the first date?


It is an odd expression, isn’t it? It’s the kind of idiomatic phrase that we may use regularly without any feeling that it’s in the least odd, until somebody such as yourself asks about it.

It comes from the mildly figurative sense of foot that refers to the end or bottom of something, such as the foot of a ladder. In this case, it is a verb that — for example — might once have meant adding a postscript to the end of a letter. But our sense refers in particular to the totting up of a column of figures, especially in an account ledger, and adding the result to the bottom of the column.

This was often used in the set phrase foot up (to), meaning to count. The Times of 19 September 1867, for example, had this: “The united debts of the colony foot up something like £50,000”. And this is from The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes, by Arthur M Winfield, published in 1901: “The two counted the pile and found it footed up to two hundred and forty dollars.”

Our sense of settling one’s account was acquired from the original because adding up the items on an account was something that would commonly be done at the point when one was paying one’s bill. The earliest example recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1819, in an American work with the title Evans’s Pedestrious Tour of Four Thousand Miles, which was republished in 1904 in a book entitled Early Western Travels 1748–1846.

To start with, it was a decidedly colloquial usage, but as time passed the associated senses fell out of use and to foot the bill is now a fixed phrase, though still somewhat informal. It often now has the implication of paying for something whose cost is considered large or unreasonable, especially if the person doing so has been forced into paying for the consequences of the actions of somebody else.

Answer 2

The phrase "foot the bill" is generally used in a context where one person is paying for the activities of another person, but is generally getting no benefit. It can also imply that the person who is paying had little choice in the matter.

Example:
"My wife went on a shopping spree to Paris and I get to foot the bill."

The daughter enrolled in an expensive college and her parents have to foot the bill.

The phrase "pay the bill" is more straightforward. It doesn't have the implications of non-benefit or lack of choice.

Example:

"If we go out on a date I will pay the bill."

I could also say,
"If we go out a date, I will foot the bill." but the connotation is slightly different. It might be interpreted as a reluctance to do so.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

in reality, "foot the bill" does mean pay the bill. It is a slang phrase. Usually when this phrase it is used when describing a business venture, or agreement between two or more people or a business.
\It is not usually used when dining or paying for an item in a store.
Example...my friend wanted to go to ( big city name) and look for some special items for school next semester, it will be an over night stay. He said that If I go with him and help him drive he will "foot the bill"

Answer 4

I agree with the answers stating that the person paying the bill is not doing it willingly. It usually relates to paying for a cost incurred by somebody else. My husband would use it when our kids buy a car and he says "So who's going to foot the bill for the insurance costs?" Usually he does.
Or if the son breaks another window, he would say "I guess I have to foot the bill for this window too."
I think it has passed into casual usage from probably a very formal state.

Answer 5

From the word-detective:

The original meaning of "foot" in a financial sense back in the 15th century was "to add up and set the total at the foot, or bottom, of a bill or account." Thus Harriet Beecher Stowe, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," wrote of "The wall-paper … garnished with chalk memorandums, and long sums footed up."

Unfortunately, by the early 19th century, "foot" had acquired its modern meaning of "to pay up or settle a bill," leading one writer to complain in 1819 that "My dogs ... helped themselves to the first repast presented, leaving their master to foot the bills."

Answer 6

I usually use "foot the bill" if it is a particularly large bill or if it was for a significant item.

It is used casually a lot.

Answer 7

you can tell someone if they go to the store to buy ,beer youll pay for it if they will go get it,