If you’ve ever watched a basketball game, you may have noticed the constant squeaking coming from the players’ shoes rubbing against the court. There’s a myth that “squeak” is related to the “sneak” of sneakers, but the true origin story of the name is related to a different type of sound.
The earliest rubber-soled shoes hit the market in the 1830s, but they became widely popular among croquet players in the 1860s. Those shoes were originally called “plimsolls” because the design featured a horizontal rubber stripe that resembled the Plimsoll line — a marking painted along a ship’s hull to denote the maximum level of submersion at which the boat could still safely operate without sinking.
The nickname “sneakers,” referring to the quiet nature of the rubber soles, came about in the 1880s. While harder leather-soled shoes would clop loudly against the ground, a person wearing sneakers could “sneak up” on others without being noticed. It wasn’t the intended purpose of the shoes, but it was a notable feature. One of the earliest citations for “sneakers” appears in an 1887 edition of the Boston Journal of Education: “It is only the harassed schoolmaster who can fully appreciate the pertinency of the name boys give to tennis shoes — sneakers.” From this example we can see that the shoes favored by croquet players had by then expanded to all sorts of athletic uses.
The early 20th century saw the founding of many athletic shoe brands, and the word “sneakers” was oft-repeated in advertisements for their rubber-soled products. It wasn’t long before the word became synonymous with other terms for athletic shoes.
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