Word.ws English Dictionary

cooling one's heels

cooling one's heels is the present participle and gerund of cool one's heels.

Meaning of cool one's heels

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

Questions about cooling one's heels

What is cooling one's heels the present participle and gerund of?
Cooling one's heels is the present participle and gerund of cool one's heels.

Words near cooling one's heels in the dictionary

  1. cooling centres
  2. cooling down
  3. cooling glass
  4. cooling glasses
  5. cooling off
  6. cooling one's heels
  7. cooling one's jets
  8. cooling out
  9. cooling plant
  10. cooling plants
  11. cooling shelter

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cooling one's heels (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “cooling one's heels.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cooling_one%27s_heels. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.