get cold feet
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get cold feet
To experience nervousness or anxiety before one attempts to do something, often to the extent that one tries to avoid it. I wasn't nervous until the morning of my wedding, but everyone assured me that I had just gotten cold feet. Good luck getting her out on stage—she always gets cold feet before a performance. It's normal to get cold feet when you're making a big life change like this.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
cold feet, get
Also, have cold feet. Retreat from an undertaking; lose one's nerve. For example, I got cold feet when I learned the trip involves white-water rafting, or Don't count on including her-she's been known to have cold feet in the past. The origin of this term has been lost. In early 17th-century Italy it meant to be short of money, but that sense has never been used in English. [Late 1800s]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
get cold feet
orhave cold feet
COMMON If you get cold feet or have cold feet about something you have planned to do, you become nervous about it and not sure that you want to do it. My boyfriend got cold feet about being in a committed relationship. Leaving Ireland wasn't easy and I had cold feet about it a couple of times.
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012
get/have cold ˈfeet
(informal) no longer want to continue what you intended or have started to do because you are nervous or afraid: Do you still want to do this parachute jump or are you getting cold feet? OPPOSITE: take the plungeFarlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017
cold feet, to get/have
To be timid; to back off from some undertaking. This expression appears to date from the nineteenth century, at least in its present meaning. In the early seventeenth century it was an Italian proverb that meant to have no money; it was so used by Ben Jonson in his play Volpone. The source of the more recent meaning is obscure. Some believe it comes from soldiers retreating in battle because their feet are frozen. Another source cites a German novel of 1862 in which a card player withdraws from a game because, he claims, his feet are cold.
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer