Cold feet
Today’s expression is cold feet. This is a funny term because it has nothing to do with your feet getting cold. It actually means that someone gets nervous and has second thoughts, or doubts, about doing something that he or she had already decided to do.
The bar owner Brian Ingberg thinks the person who stole his famous bottle of vodka got cold feet and wanted to return the bottle by placing it where he knew someone would find it. If that’s true, then the thief had some doubts about whether he actually wanted to own this bottle. Instead of going through with his plan to either keep or try to sell the bottle, the thief got cold feet and returned the bottle.
One of the most common uses of cold feet has to do with marriage. People say it’s normal for a man or woman to get cold feet right before a wedding. As the big day gets closer, or maybe even on the morning of the wedding, a bride or groom might start to feel nervous and doubt whether getting married is the right idea. In most cases, this is just normal nervousness that passes. Cold feet is more of a feeling than a decision. You can get cold feet about getting married, but still say “I do.” In that case, you might say the groom got cold feet the day before, but got over his nervousness in time for the wedding ceremony.
That’s a wrap for this Monday edition of Plain English. I hope you like the new, shorter episodes that come out every Monday and Thursday. I’d love to hear what you think about the show on either Facebook or Twitter, where my user name is PlainEnglishPod. If you speak Russian, you can tell me how badly I mangled the name “Leonard Yankelovich” earlier in the show. If you want to go the old-fashioned route and send an email, I’m jeff [at] plainenglish.com. Thanks again for being in the audience and we’ll be back with a new episode on Thursday.
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