Word.ws English Dictionary

wait for the other shoe to drop

wait for the other shoe to drop verb: to defer action or decision until another matter is finished or resolved.

Verb

wait for the other shoe to drop (third-person singular simple present waits for the other shoe to drop, present participle waiting for the other shoe to drop, simple past and past participle waited for the other shoe to drop)

  1. (idiomatic) To defer action or decision until another matter is finished or resolved.
  2. (idiomatic) To await a seemingly inevitable event, especially one that is not desirable.
    • After the tournament, Player admitted that all through the final round he had been nervously waiting for more trouble. "It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop."1969 August 29, “Golf: The Confidence Man”, in Time

Forms of wait for the other shoe to drop

third-person singular presentwaits for the other shoe to drop
present participlewaiting for the other shoe to drop
past participlewaited for the other shoe to drop
pastwaited for the other shoe to drop
alternative formwait for another shoe to drop

Origin of wait for the other shoe to drop

A common experience of tenement living in apartment-style housing in New York City and other large cities during the manufacturing boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Apartments were built with very similar designs, with the bedrooms located directly above and underneath one another. Thus, it was normal to hear a neighbor removing their shoes in the apartment above. As one shoe made a sound hitting the floor, the expectation for the other shoe to make a similar disturbance was created.

Questions about wait for the other shoe to drop

What does wait for the other shoe to drop mean?
Wait for the other shoe to drop means to defer action or decision until another matter is finished or resolved.
What part of speech is wait for the other shoe to drop?
Wait for the other shoe to drop is a verb.
What is the past tense of wait for the other shoe to drop?
The past tense of wait for the other shoe to drop is waited for the other shoe to drop.

Words near wait for the other shoe to drop in the dictionary

  1. wait for Godot
  2. wait for it
  3. wait for the ball to drop
  4. wait for the cat to jump
  5. wait for the dust to settle
  6. wait for the other shoe to drop
  7. wait in the wings
  8. wait on
  9. wait on hand, foot and finger
  10. wait on someone hand and foot
  11. wait on someone hand, foot and finger

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wait for the other shoe to drop (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-wait for the other shoe to drop.ogg.

Cite this entry: “wait for the other shoe to drop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wait_for_the_other_shoe_to_drop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.