Johnny语法博客：临阵退缩

Cold feet

‘To have cold feet’ is a nice expression that we use when someone doesn’t do something, or backs out of it, because they became too nervous, or lost their nerve.

A. Did John talk to the boss about getting a raise?

B. No, he got cold feet in the end.

There are a few suggestions about where it comes from, one of them being that soldiers who were too frightened to fight used to claim that they couldn’t fight because their feet were frozen. The other suggestion is that the expression was once used to describe poor people, who were so poor that they couldn’t afford shoes (and so had cold feet), this was then used as an excuse by gamblers who wanted to back out of a bet and used the excuse that they had run out of money (‘had cold feet’), when really they had just lost their nerve.

I actually think we use ‘lost his/her nerve’ more commonly now than ‘got cold feet’. We can also use ‘freak out’, as in ‘he freaked out’, which means that he got so scared or angry about something that he went a bit crazy, but this expression is very colloquial so I wouldn’t use it in the workplace!

(Source: www.englishonline.org.cn)

Johnny Grammar is English Online's resident grammar teacher. Johnny loves to tackle your worst grammar nightmares and provide you with simple explanations.

Johnny's blog: Johnny talks about interesting words and expressions in English that he comes across in his daily life.