Cooling my heels

[sagehen]

>James D. SMITH writes:
>"Cooling my/your heels" is a phrase I've heard all my
>life, although I use it rarely.  This may be a
>generational marker.  More common today, IMO, is "cool
>your jets".
>
 I don't see these phrases as equivalent, though the generational marker is
undoubted.
"Cooling one's heels"  is descriptive rather than vocative, for one thing;
is more belittling, dismissive, insulting actually, than instructive or
admonitory.  It means /be left waiting (as unimportant)/.
"Cool your jets"  is more directly reactive to an acknowledged expression
of anger or impatience, or whatever.  Its earlier equivalent would hve been
"Calm down!"
A. Murie


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