Athletic shoe is a generic name for the footwear primarily designed for sports or other forms of physical exercise but in recent years has come to be used for casual everyday activities.

They are also known as trainers (British English and Hong Kong English), trabs (British English), daps (Welsh English), sandshoes, gym boots or joggers (Australian English), running shoes, runners or gutties (Canadian English, Hiberno-English), sneakers (American English, Australian English, and Indian English), tennis shoes (British English and American English), gym shoes, tennies, sports shoes, sneaks, tackies (South African English and Hiberno-English), rubber shoes (Philippine English) or canvers (Nigerian English).

The British English term "trainer" derives from "training shoe." There is evidence that this usage of "trainer" originated as a genericized tradename for a make of training shoe made in 1968 by Gola.

Plimsolls (English English) are indoor athletic shoes, and are also called Ryan's Spongies or sneakers or matthews squares in American English and daps in Welsh English and West Country English. The word "sneaker" is often attributed to Henry Nelson McKinney, an advertising agent for N. W. Ayer & Son, who, in 1917, coined the term because the rubber sole made the shoe stealthy. However, the word was in use at least as early as 1887, as the Boston Journal of Education made reference to "sneakers" as "the name boys give to tennis shoes".