Word.ws English Dictionary

cool one's heels

cool one's heels verb: to wait, especially impatiently or restlessly.

Verb

cool one's heels (third-person singular simple present cools one's heels, present participle cooling one's heels, simple past and past participle cooled one's heels)

  1. (idiomatic) To wait, especially impatiently or restlessly.
    • I cooled my heels in the cloisters till nine, then went in to the music-meeting.1711, Jonathan Swift, The Journal to Stella (published 1766), ch. 4, letter 31
    • Remember I say it—he'll cool his heels in a prison, if he's no wiser than of late, before a twel'month.1863, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, chapter 27, in The House by the Church Yard

Synonyms of cool one's heels

Forms of cool one's heels

third-person singular presentcools one's heels
present participlecooling one's heels
past participlecooled one's heels
pastcooled one's heels

Questions about cool one's heels

What does cool one's heels mean?
Cool one's heels means to wait, especially impatiently or restlessly.
What part of speech is cool one's heels?
Cool one's heels is a verb.
What is the past tense of cool one's heels?
The past tense of cool one's heels is cooled one's heels.

Words near cool one's heels in the dictionary

  1. cool kids
  2. cool kids' table
  3. cool media
  4. cool medium
  5. cool off
  6. cool one's heels
  7. cool one's jets
  8. cool out
  9. cool pop
  10. cool pose
  11. cool poses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cool one's heels (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-cool one's heels.ogg.

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