Cold feet is sudden fear just before a big step. Get cold feet, a case of cold feet, he had cold feet.
It appears almost only with get or have, and it belongs to weddings above all others. The most likely origin is a German phrase meaning exactly the same thing.
1phrasecold feetSudden fear just before a big step, like a wedding.
“He got cold feet the night before the wedding and nearly called it off.”
cold feet is a fear.
Possibly from a German phrase meaning to get cold feet, in the same sense.
lmo
avegh minga frecc i pee — to have no money
German
kalte Füße bekommen — to get cold feet
English, today
cold feet
Idiomatic sense possibly from a German kalte Füße bekommen (“to get cold feet”), or of lmo avegh minga frecc i pee (“to have no money”) literally “to be cold in the feet” (Italian aver freddo ai piedi), said by a person who wishes to stop gambling, allegedly because the person now has cold feet due to being too poor to afford proper footwear.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Idioms