kick up one's heels

Verb

kick up one's heels (third-person singular simple present kicks up one's heels, present participle kicking up one's heels, simple past and past participle kicked up one's heels)

1. (figuratively) To dance.
   • Above the peals of laughter with which the words were received, rose Jake's voice, "Come on, ole fiddler, play somefin a nigger kin kick up his heels to; what's de use of singing after dat fashion; dis aint no meetin."1852, Mary Henderson Eastman, chapter XI, in Aunt Phillis's Cabin
   • He does not get on so well in the evening and night time, when his youthful audience has dispersed, and has been replaced by adults of the tag-rag and draggle-tail breed who have no taste for any tunes but those they can vigorously kick up their heels to, […] .1881, James Greenwood, Low-Life Deeps, Chapter 16: A Cockney Holiday
2. (idiomatic) To relax; to enjoy oneself; to do as one pleases.
   • "Therefore he has a right, for a change, to 'kick up his heels?"1904, Henry James, chapter XVI, in The Golden Bowl
   • Everybody laughed, for he was a clumsy and comical beast to be decorated with roses and daisies. But the lady is proud of him, and now that pampered donkey has nothing to do but pull her Bath chair about, when she is at Holly Lodge, and kick up his heels on a clover pasture.1912, Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson, chapter XII, in Greyfriar's Bobby
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see kick, up, one's, heels.
   • If a swimmer kicks up his heels and splashes the water, the judge will take points off accordingly.