get cold feet
UK/ˌɡɛt ˈkəʊld fiːt/US/ˌɡɛt ˈkoʊld fit/
get cold feet verb: to become nervous about going through with something.
Verb
get cold feet (third-person singular simple present gets cold feet, present participle getting cold feet, simple past got cold feet, past participle (UK) got cold feet or (US) gotten cold feet)
- To become nervous about going through with something.
- Near-synonym: chicken out
- As we accelerate after leaving Didcot, we pass a lot of masts erected for wires that have not yet materialised - and probably won't for years to come. That's because halfway through the Great Western Electrification Programme, ministers suddenly got cold feet as the cost escalated.2020 July 12, Christian Wolmar, “Cab ride reveals the pluses and minuses of Oxford route”, in RAIL, number 987, page 44
- Synonyms:
- chicken out
Synonyms of get cold feet
Forms of get cold feet
| third-person singular present | gets cold feet |
|---|---|
| present participle | getting cold feet |
| past | got cold feet |
| past participle UK | got cold feet |
| past participle US | gotten cold feet |
Questions about get cold feet
- What does get cold feet mean?
- Get cold feet means to become nervous about going through with something.
- What part of speech is get cold feet?
- Get cold feet is a verb.
- How do you pronounce get cold feet?
- Get cold feet is pronounced /ˌɡɛt ˈkəʊld fiːt/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of get cold feet?
- The past tense of get cold feet is got cold feet.
Words near get cold feet in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: get cold feet (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-get cold feet.ogg.
Cite this entry: “get cold feet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/get_cold_feet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.