Cold Feet

[Wilson Gray]

On May 3, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Cold Feet
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> 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
>

True story:

A small group of people from the Michigan LSA summer institute are
picnicking on the shore of a lake. One of the guys strips down to his
swimming trunks and strides into the lake till the water is up to his
knees. There he stands, like the Colossus of Rhodes incarnate, arms
akimbo, surveying all that lies beneath his kingly gaze. For about five
seconds, when he suddenly turns and runs, as clumsily as any child in a
backyard pool, back to the shore. As he catches his breath, he pants
out, "Shit, I had to get out of there! My feet were getting cold!" A
two-second pause. Then he blurts out, "Hey! Is this where 'getting cold
feet' comes from?!"

-Wilson Gray