Word.ws English Dictionary

waiting for the other shoe to drop

waiting for the other shoe to drop is the present participle and gerund of wait for the other shoe to drop.

Meaning of wait for the other shoe to drop

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

Questions about waiting for the other shoe to drop

What is waiting for the other shoe to drop the present participle and gerund of?
Waiting for the other shoe to drop is the present participle and gerund of wait for the other shoe to drop.

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

  1. waiting around
  2. waiting for
  3. waiting for Godot
  4. waiting for the ball to drop
  5. waiting for the cat to jump
  6. waiting for the other shoe to drop
  7. waiting game
  8. waiting games
  9. waiting in the wings
  10. waiting list
  11. waiting lists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: waiting for the other shoe to drop (page history and authors); 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.

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