Literal Translation
To get up on the left foot
Actual Meaning
To get up on the wrong side of the bed
Etymology
Left or right, everyone has their dominant foot. However, this has nothing to do with shoes, because, surprisingly, there wasn’t always one for each foot. In the 17th century, there was no distinction between right and left feet. For cobbler, this meant they only had to use one mould.
It wasn’t until 1859 that Monsieur Godillot created a right shoe and a left shoe to make footwear more comfortable. And that is where the saying ‘getting up on the wrong foot’ comes from. It is understood, of course, to mean getting up on the left side. The left side is always associated with being clumsy, something evil (‘sinistra’ in some Latin languages) or it is a sign of bad luck.
The Larousse dictionary established equality between left-handed and right-handed people in the 1930s. But that didn’t solve the problem: we still sometimes get up on the left foot.