Cold Feet

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Daniel Engber of Slate Magazine has just put out an "Explainer" column on
the origins of "cold feet", using the Fritz Reuter citation below as well
as another one from Reuter that I subsequently tracked down.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2117944/


--Ben Zimmer



On Tue, 3 May 2005 12:09:01 -0400, Benjamin Zimmer
<bgzimmer at RCI.RUTGERS.EDU> wrote:

>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