A short, ankle-high boot, especially a woman's boot that laces or buttons up the front.
French word from 'botte' (boot) with the diminutive suffix -ine, meaning a short or small boot. It entered English in the 19th century from French fashion terminology.
Bottines were the go-to boot in Victorian and Edwardian times—they gave women stability for walking while being fashionably modest, and interestingly, the lacing and buttoning made them symbols of propriety and respectability in the 1800s.
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