Word.ws English Dictionary

getting cold feet

getting cold feet is the present participle and gerund of get cold feet.

Meaning of get cold feet

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)

  1. To become nervous about going through with something.
    • Near-synonym: chicken out
    Synonyms:
    chicken out

Questions about getting cold feet

What is getting cold feet the present participle and gerund of?
Getting cold feet is the present participle and gerund of get cold feet.

Words near getting cold feet in the dictionary

  1. getting busy
  2. getting by
  3. getting by the balls
  4. getting by with
  5. getting changed
  6. getting cold feet
  7. getting down
  8. getting down on
  9. getting down to
  10. getting down to bedrock
  11. getting down to brass tacks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: getting cold feet (page history and authors); 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.

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Cite this entry: “getting cold feet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/getting_cold_feet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.