Footings hold up the foundation. I understand they are vital!

Keeping the house or other building level and not moving or heaving to keep from being damaged

Has to do with the foundation.  

A solid base for the bldg, that neither shifts, sinks or heaves.

Has to do with the foundation.

Like Jeff Dowler stated it is indeed the basis for a proper foundation Barbara Todaro 

Footings are associated with the foundation. Usually made from concret. On homes with pilings the footings are poured into a hole where the site of the piling will be. On a crawl, the footing is where the concrete blocks will be placed. Footings are just a name for an area where something of heavy weight will sit.

The basis for a good foundation. You can always tell a badly poured one

It's the key to a solid foundation and resting on the job is encouraged.  

Here in New England you can sure tell a footing that was not properly poured come spring when the frost has heaved it up and melting drops it back down leaving some nice cracks. 

Barbara Todaro The footing is the basis for having a good foundation which ultimately holds the weight of the house.

Base of the walls, walls are attached to the footing. 

The key to a firm underpinning!

Barbara Todaro - is it foundation? (learning from your questions....)

It keeps the house from settling by supporting the foundation and all framing on top. This was a problem in older construction 50 to a 100 years ago, the footers were not wide and deep enough and thus the houses settled big time.

That's the first thing that the building inspector is going to look at when I put on my addition.

The main 'ingredient' for a good foundation!  Our footings were being poured on our home that we were building 2 years ago.  As the last footing was being poured, the contractor noticed some 'strange' soil so, we had an engineer come out - found that there was a dry creek bed that ran smack dab throught the middle of our soon-to-be-house!  84, 25' pylons had to be drilled into the ground throughout the foundation!  Now, that's a foundation!  

Footing, synonymous with Footer spreads the weight of the structure to prevent settling of the structure.

To give you a place to wipe your feet.

I will be placing my feet under the house table to touch a house vertifcal posts to show how much I adore them....

I don't care if they are new or oldies.

To keep you from falling into the pit.