Word.ws English Dictionary

get one's foot in the door

get one's foot in the door verb: to initiate contact or a relationship; to gain access, especially to an entry-level job.

Verb

get one's foot in the door (third-person singular simple present gets one's foot in the door, present participle getting one's foot in the door, simple past got one's foot in the door, past participle (UK) got one's foot in the door or (US) gotten one's foot in the door)

  1. (idiomatic) To initiate contact or a relationship; to gain access, especially to an entry-level job.
    • And the legislature had better study Texas, before it commits this state to parimutuel betting, thus letting the professional gambler get his foot in the door.1935 February 19, “When You Let the Gamblers In”, in Milwaukee Journal, retrieved 10 Jun 2009, page 8
    • Guinier recognizes the need for minorities to get their feet in the door, but argues that "insiders" must be authentic representatives in order for minorities to achive real political power.1994 October, Binny Miller, “Disarming Hostile Majorities: A Queer Reading of Lani Guinier on Voting Rights”, in Gay Community News, page 10

Synonyms of get one's foot in the door

Forms of get one's foot in the door

third-person singular presentgets one's foot in the door
present participlegetting one's foot in the door
pastgot one's foot in the door
past participle UKgot one's foot in the door
past participle USgotten one's foot in the door

Origin of get one's foot in the door

Probably from a practice attributed to door-to-door salesmen of placing a foot in the opening of a prospective customer's door, thereby preventing the person from closing the door until the conclusion of the sales pitch.

Questions about get one's foot in the door

What does get one's foot in the door mean?
Get one's foot in the door means to initiate contact or a relationship; to gain access, especially to an entry-level job.
What part of speech is get one's foot in the door?
Get one's foot in the door is a verb.
What is the past tense of get one's foot in the door?
The past tense of get one's foot in the door is got one's foot in the door.

Words near get one's foot in the door in the dictionary

  1. get one's fill
  2. get one's finger out
  3. get one's fingers burnt
  4. get one's fingers into
  5. get one's fingers onto
  6. get one's foot in the door
  7. get one's freak on
  8. get one's fuck on
  9. get one's groove on
  10. get one's hand in
  11. get one's hands dirty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get one's foot in the door (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-get one's foot in the door.ogg.

Cite this entry: “get one's foot in the door.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/get_one%27s_foot_in_the_door. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.