Cold Feet

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Tue, 3 May 2005 09:56:43 -0400, bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>All over the newspapers for day after day after day now is the "runaway
>bride" who got "cold feet."
>..
>This is not merely "cold feet" and each example must be checked. I don't
>have that kind of time today.
>...
>...
>(OED)
[...]
>1893 S. CRANE Maggie (1896) xiv. 112, I knew this was the way it would
>be. They got *cold feet.

It's definitely a challenge sorting out the literal and figurative usages
for this one.  Here's a cite from 1871 using the phrase both literally and
figuratively for the purposes of a joke...

-----
http://tinyurl.com/8ovop
_The Living Age_, May 6, 1871, Volume 109, Issue 1405: p. 334, col. 2

"Children, my feet are getting cold," said Bank, the shoemaker, "I am
going home."
"What? You may as well wait till the business comes to a head," said
Thiel, the cabinet-maker.
"What do you know about it?" said Bank. "It seems to me as if there was'nt
a word of truth in the whole story."
"What? You told me the story, yourself, this morning," said Thiel.
"Yes, that is so, but morning talk is not evening talk. I have considered
the matter since then."
"That is to say, you have got cold feet over it," said the tailor. All
laughed.
-----

This is from _Seedtime and Harvest_, a translation of _Ut mine Stromtid_
(1862–64) by Fritz Reuter <http://www.bartleby.com/65/re/Reuter-F.html>.
The German equivalent for "get cold feet" is "kalte Füße bekommen", with
the same figurative usage.  So is "cold feet" merely a calque from German?


--Ben Zimmer