Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Cold feet   /koʊld fit/   Listen
Cold feet

noun
1.
Timidity that prevents the continuation of a course of action.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Cold feet" Quotes from Famous Books



... you?" he asked, dropping his suave manner and becoming abusive. "Are you one of those yellow-livered chaps that's got chronic cold feet?" ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... should be so cold to the feet. With my sore throat, I am sure to have influenza,—'that I cast myself at thy feet'—tell me, dear, do you know if the chapel-keeper has a footwarmer? Nothing is worse than cold feet, and that Madame de P. sticks there for hours. I am sure she confesses her friends' sins along with her own. It is intolerable; I no longer have any feeling in my right foot; I would pay that woman for her foot-warmer—'I bow my head in the dust under the weight ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz

... and loud,— It ban tough game for dis Yankee crowd; And Lieut. Olson, he tal his pal, "'Ay tank we ban due to run lak hal!" So dey start to run, or else retreat,— Dis ban noder name for gude cold feet; And dey run so fast sum dey can go, Lak Russians luring dese Yaps, yu know. "Yee whiz!" say Sheridan. "Yump, old hoss! Ay tenk my soldiers get double cross, Ay s'pose yure hoofs getting purty sore, But we only got 'bout sax ...
— The Norsk Nightingale - Being the Lyrics of a "Lumberyack" • William F. Kirk

... breathing, irregular sleep, lack of exercise, and improper use of stimulants, or holding the thought of fear, jealousy and hate. All of these things, or any one of them, will, in very many persons, cause fever, chills, cold feet, ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard

... extraordinary shapes; sometimes the articles on his dressing-table; sometimes his clothes; and once, when he was about to put on his bedroom slippers, he found them already occupied—occupied by icy cold feet. Another time, when he put out his hand to take hold of a tumbler, he put it on the back of another hand—smooth, ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... he muttered. "I ain't skeered o' much, but diptheery gives me cold feet. I calc'late to skin out o' this and into the mountains to-morrer. How about this ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... started. It was a piercing frosty morning; but we were all so tired that we slept just as we were. I found myself nestling on the floor of a truck (very dirty), between a gun-wheel and the three foot high side with feed-bags for pillows. Cold feet soon roused me, and I got up on to the gun in the sun, and saw we were slowly climbing a long incline through the usual veldt and kopjes, only more inhabited looking, with a tree and a farm or two. A lovely scene with the sun reddening the veldt in the pure ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... there, I suppose, you have an odd case of a transference of something that was happening in the brain to the extremities. My feet were quite warm to the palm of my hand, but to my sense they were frozen. But what a testimony to the fitness of the American idiom, "cold feet," as signifying a depressed and desponding mood! But, somehow or other, the tale was finished and the "notion" was at last out of my head. I have gone into all this detail about "A Fragment of Life" because I have been assured in many quarters ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen

... Fred Thurman—this girl, here, saw me shoot him. And it was when I told Warfield I was afraid she might set folks talking that he began to get cold feet. Up to then everything was lovely, but Warfield began to crawfish a little. We figured—we figured, emphasize the we, folks,—that the Quirt would have to be put outa business. We knew if the girl told Brit and Frank, they'd maybe get the nerve to try and pin something on us. We've ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower

... say is," said Queenie, "that if you don't go out I shall give you up. I've no use for men with cold feet." ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair

... this early dawn is distinctly chilly, and the A.M.'s are beginning to stamp their cold feet upon the dewy grass, but very careful and circumspect is the Pilot, as he mutters to himself, "Don't worry and flurry, or ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... it into the neck of the slip that will be worn tomorrow. Nothing can be more attractive than a clean, sweetly smelling baby, and, per contra, nothing is more disgusting than a wet, sour, cold, crying baby. If he be wet and sour he will surely have cold feet and hands, and as surely will he cry. Poor little thing! It is his only way of expressing his opinion of the state ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery

... for which children are flogged at school are "crimes for which they are in nowise responsible," and "when stripped of the color given to them by senseless and unmeaning rules, they are simply the crimes of being a boy and being a girl," and are "incited by bad air, cold feet, overwork and long confinement; crimes which the parents of these same children are accustomed to excuse in themselves, when they sit in church, by the dulness of the sermon, or other circumstances that offend against nature and which they sometimes soothe with fennel or hartshorn, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... from the lips of the imprisoned man. "Are you there, oh dwellers in the cesspool of respectability?" he shouted. "Do you stand in the mud with cold feet listening? I have been with your wives. Eleven Caxton wives without babes have I been with and it has been fruitless. The twelfth woman I have just left, leaving her man in the road a bleeding sacrifice to ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... land and labor are dearer positively and comparatively with us, and that our pork-packing or stock-broking princes prefer to spend on comfort rather than size in their houses, and do not like the cold feet which the merchant princes of Italy must have had from generation to generation. I shall always be sorry I did not wear arctics when I went to the Pallavicini-Durazzo palace, and I strongly urge the reader to do ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... league with the cattlemen to crowd Annersley off the range, took occasion to suggest to the T-Bar-T foreman that the old man was getting cold feet—which was a mistake, for Annersley had simply wished to keep within the law and avoid trouble if possible. Thus it happened that Annersley brought upon himself the very trouble that he had honorably tried to avoid. Let the most courageous ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... more shame to those who deserted her, though it was God's ordering that she might be preserved," answered Adam. "But run on, Jacob, and see that the fire is blazing up brightly, we shall want it to dry her damp clothes and warm her cold feet, ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston

... M'Lachlan. I think he would have made the finest soldier of the lot of us," added Wagstaffe. "You remember his remark to me, that we only had the bye to play now? He was a true prophet: we are dormy, anyhow. (Only cold feet at Home can let us down now.) And he only saw three months' service! Still, he made a great exit from this world, Bobby, and that is the only thing that matters in these days. Ha! H'm! As our new Allies would say, I am beginning to 'pull heart stuff' on you. ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... bottle or electric pads are courage and optimism. A patient of mine laughingly tells of an incident which she says happened a number of years ago, but which I have forgotten. She says that she asked me one night as she carried her hot-water bottle to bed, "Doctor, what makes cold feet?" and that I lightly answered "Cowardice!" Whereupon she threw away her beloved water-bag and has ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... igloo, and hunt from there. It was terribly cold for them, sleeping in an igloo, without fire or blankets, merely a shelter from the wind, and forced, as they were, to sleep in their clothes. I have had such experience and know what it is. In such cases one suffers more from cold feet than anything else. They would be intensely cold with dry stockings, but one's stockings are always wet from perspiration after walking, and when compelled to wear them at night cause ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder

... be up there on that platform all alone—not a soul with him, because these two dubs that ought to be standing by him, they've got cold feet already. And he'll be up there all alone, except for a pitcher of cold water and a glass, and a table and a chair; and he'll begin to spout. I dunno whether he c'n talk or not; but we'll let him run on for maybe ten minutes, and about the time he thinks he's making ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... my collecting funds spasmodically, a number of our local friends got "cold feet." Reports started, not circulated by well-wishers, that it was all a piece of personal vanity, that no such thing was needed, and if built would prove a white elephant, to support which I would be going round with my hat in my hand worrying the merchants. We had at that time some ninety ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... took off her hood and shawl in silence, untied her wet shoes, and placed her cold feet on the clean, warm stove-hearth; took in the brightness of the room, the shiny candlesticks, the neatly-spread tea-table; took whiffs of the steaming tea,—all in utter silence; only, when Kitty's father, looking out, said, "There's been business done here since you went away," ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)

... cold feet. A most effective way to warm the feet is to dip them for a moment in cold water and then rub them vigorously with a coarse towel until they glow with warmth. Furthermore, no more effective remedy for ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall

... John, sitting up in his blankets. "All of them with cold feet, waiting for the sun to ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough



Words linked to "Cold feet" :   timidity, timorousness, timidness



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com