Word.ws English Dictionary

hold someone's feet to the fire

hold someone's feet to the fire verb: to maintain personal, social, political, or legal pressure on someone in order to induce them to comply with one's desires; to hold someone accountable for their actions.

Verb

hold someone's feet to the fire (third-person singular simple present holds someone's feet to the fire, present participle holding someone's feet to the fire, simple past and past participle held someone's feet to the fire)

  1. (idiomatic) To maintain personal, social, political, or legal pressure on someone in order to induce them to comply with one's desires; to hold someone accountable for their actions.
    • In this letter the governor explained that he was being threatened with impeachment and needed all the jobs in his gift to stave off such proceedings and to "hold the feet of members of the legislature to the fire."1917 September 3, “Governor Sued for Large Sum”, in Evening Independent, Florida, US, retrieved 17 Apr 2009, page 3
    • We want to hold the Administration's feet to the fire to secure a decent agreement.1988 March 5, Neil A. Lewis, “U.S. Insists Soviet Stop Sending Arms to Afghan Regime”, in New York Times, retrieved 17 Apr 2009

Forms of hold someone's feet to the fire

third-person singular presentholds someone's feet to the fire
present participleholding someone's feet to the fire
past participleheld someone's feet to the fire
pastheld someone's feet to the fire

Origin of hold someone's feet to the fire

From the implied threat of physical harm by burning.

Questions about hold someone's feet to the fire

What does hold someone's feet to the fire mean?
Hold someone's feet to the fire means to maintain personal, social, political, or legal pressure on someone in order to induce them to comply with one's desires; to hold someone accountable for their actions.
What part of speech is hold someone's feet to the fire?
Hold someone's feet to the fire is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold someone's feet to the fire?
The past tense of hold someone's feet to the fire is held someone's feet to the fire.

Words near hold someone's feet to the fire in the dictionary

  1. hold over
  2. hold over someone's head
  3. hold ransom
  4. hold serve
  5. hold short
  6. hold someone's feet to the fire
  7. hold someone's hand
  8. hold space
  9. hold still
  10. hold sway
  11. hold tack

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold someone's feet to the fire (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-hold someone's feet to the fire.ogg.

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