Word.ws English Dictionary

holding someone's feet to the fire

holding someone's feet to the fire is the present participle and gerund of hold someone's feet to the fire.

Meaning of hold someone's feet to the fire

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

Questions about holding someone's feet to the fire

What is holding someone's feet to the fire the present participle and gerund of?
Holding someone's feet to the fire is the present participle and gerund of hold someone's feet to the fire.

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

  1. holding over someone's head
  2. holding pattern
  3. holding patterns
  4. holding ransom
  5. holding short
  6. holding someone's feet to the fire
  7. holding someone's hand
  8. holding space
  9. holding stack
  10. holding stacks
  11. holding still

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holding someone's feet to the fire (page history and authors); 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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