cold feet

1. 1.

   timidity that prevents the continuation of a course of action

   “I was going to tell him but I got cold feet”

   Broadertimidity

Questions about cold feet

What does cold feet mean?

cold feet means "timidity that prevents the continuation of a course of action".

Is cold feet a common word?

cold feet is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.