Word.ws English Dictionary

holds someone's feet to the fire

holds someone's feet to the fire is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 holds someone's feet to the fire

What is holds someone's feet to the fire the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Holds someone's feet to the fire is the third-person singular simple present indicative of hold someone's feet to the fire.

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

  1. holds out
  2. holds over
  3. holds over someone's head
  4. holds ransom
  5. holds short
  6. holds someone's feet to the fire
  7. holds someone's hand
  8. holds space
  9. holds still
  10. holds tack
  11. holds that thought

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holds 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “holds someone's feet to the fire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/holds_someone%27s_feet_to_the_fire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.