Talk:Cold feet

Discarded material
I removed
 * In weddings, having "cold feet" can be a state of ambivalence, or uncertainty in regards to a pending wedding; Having cold feet is a common alibi used by runaway brides.

It is a silly space filler in the absence of a ref showing that weddings are a major context, which will be hard since GTests show
 * about 224,000 for "cold feet" wedding
 * about 1,980,000 for "Cold feet"

and the false hits (non-metaphorical uses) among those 2M are not likely to have that much in common. Some of the 224k also need to be checked to see how often pages mentioning "wedding" use "cold feet" without metaphorical intent, let alone metaphoric uses about matters other than the wedding. Don't forget that "wedding anniversary" is unlikely to occur with "cold feet" in this sense, but is counted in the above search. But this is idle talk, bcz that much refinement beyond a simple GTest IMO gets you firmly into WP:OR territory. So find some reliable references on how much it's used.

That, by the way, is my reason for not rewriting over, e.g.
 * echoing "having cold feet", truly shitty writing
 * "alibi"'s primary, and thus only clear meaning is "bcz i was elsewhere"
 * who capitalizes following a semicolon
 * the r.b. lk was to the improper (and now removed) dictdef at the top of the Dab

--Jerzy•t 22:40, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Here's a source w/ (only non-wedding) examples: Slang - Learn American Slang expressions.  --Jerzy•t 08:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Wiktionary
Shouldn't this be in Wiktionary, instead of Wikipedia. Series premiere (remake) (talk) 03:03, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I've changed my mind, it should be merged into Doubt Series premiere (remake) (talk) 03:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)


 * What, did you get...oh, never mind. --Several Times (talk) 20:24, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Origins: I always thought the expression came from literally having cold feet. That is, when fully willing to run to the ocean on the beach on a sunny day, and as soon as your feet touch the water, you feel unwilling to continue. Please add if needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.240.230.74 (talk) 05:05, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Actual academic sources
Do people not know how to use Google Scholar? Psychoanalysis, APA experimental psych, and behavioral economics are my first three results. I mean, come on - this is perfectly ripe for expansion, as the phenomenon has no other name than "an individual who changes her beliefs so as to become more pessimistic as payoff time approaches". This deserves expansion (and I have a presentation tomorrow so I'm not gonna do it right now). SamuelRiv (talk) 22:18, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Origin
The origin of the term itself has been attributed to American author Stephen Crane, who added the phrase, in 1896, to the second edition of his short novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. [2]

I think that's unlikely. It would f.e. not explain why the 1:1 German translation "kalte Füsse (bekommen) means just the same thing. Usually direct translation of expressions like that do not work very well (with some notable exceptions such as "give the ghost up" and "cold feet"), so that a German origin coming from a translation after Stephen Crane usage seems unlikely 192.166.198.50 (talk) 18:45, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Improvments
i think to improve this page they could make bullet points or well written paragraphs to make it easier to read. they could maybe add a picture to the page or a link to another site that better explains it. --JennZmaila (talk) 00:49, 17 September 2011 (UTC)