pedes

Pedes is the Latin plural form of pes, meaning foot. In classical and biomedical Latin, pedes was used to refer to feet in a general sense, for humans or animals. In modern English, the singular pes and the plural feet have largely replaced pedes in everyday usage, with pedes appearing mainly in scholarly, historical, or Latin-phrased contexts.

In anatomy and medicine, pes is still used in its singular form in established terms describing a single foot, such as pes planus (flat foot) or pes cavus (high-arched foot). The plural pedes can appear when a text specifically references multiple feet, but such usage is uncommon outside of Latin phrasing or certain taxonomic or anatomical descriptions.

The word pedes also informs the English prefix ped- (or peda- in some compounds), which denotes foot or walking. This prefix appears in words such as pedal, pedestrian, pedestal, and pedalism. It is derived from Latin pes rather than the Greek pod- root, though both roots relate to feet in different linguistic traditions.

Overall, pedes is a historical and technical term tied to Latin nomenclature. In contemporary English writing, it is typically encountered only in specialized or academic contexts, with feet serving as the standard plural in everyday language.