Shoemaking

Everything in this workshop is built round der Leisten, the wooden or plastic foot that a shoe takes its shape from, and English has the very same word in the cobbler’s « last ». Both go back to a Germanic noun for a track or footprint: Old English had lāst and Gothic laists in that sense, so the tool is named after the mark a foot leaves behind. From the same noun came a verb that first meant to follow a track, and then to carry something through. German kept it as leisten, to achieve or to provide; English kept it as « to last », to go on. One footprint therefore left a workshop tool in both languages, a German verb of performance and an English verb of endurance. A practical warning to go with it: the plural die Leisten is also the plural of die Leiste, a strip or moulding, so only the singular article keeps the two apart.