Hobnail (footwear)

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For other uses, see Hobnail (disambiguation).

A hobnail.

A pair of hobnailed boots.

In footwear, a hobnail is a short nail with a thick head used to increase the durability of boot soles.

Hobnailed boots have been used since antiquity for inexpensive durable footwear, often by workmen and the military. They are boots with hobnails, usually installed in a regular pattern, over the whole sole. They also usually have an iron horseshoe-shaped insert, called a heel iron, to strengthen the heel. They provide traction on soft or rocky ground, but they tend to slide on smooth hard surfaces.

Hobnails were used in the trench boots of World War I. [1]

[edit] In popular culture

Hobnail boots were worn by the narrator's father in Lonnie Donegan's 1960 #1 single, "My Old Man's a Dustman".
Lou Reed, then of The Velvet Underground, mentions hobnail boots ("Seasick Sarah/had a golden nose/Hobnail boots/wrapped around her toes") in the song "Run, Run, Run" featured on the 1967 album, "The Velvet Underground and Nico".
The Beatles song "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", from the 1968 'White Album', features a description of a man with "multi-coloured mirrors on his hobnail boots".
In Nick Cave's song "John Finn's Wife", John Finn is described to have "filed-down teeth and a hobnail boot and his fists full of pistols in his pockets."
In 2001, hobnail boots were referenced in the Tony Award winning Musical "Urinetown: The Musical" in "Cop Song" as the song goes, "Certainly a season/trample out a treason/with hobnail boots".
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Fenrir Greyback is described as wearing hobnailed boots.