get (one's) feet wet

(redirected from get our feet wet)

get (one's) feet wet

To try or start something. I'm confident that you'll be able to drive a stick shift—you just need to get your feet wet first.

See also: feet, get, wet

get one's feet wet

Fig. to get a little first-time experience with something. (Obvious literal possibilities.) Of course he can't do the job right. He's hardly got his feet wet yet. I'm looking forward to learning to drive. I can't wait to get behind the steering wheel and get my feet wet.

See also: feet, get, wet

get one's feet wet

Embark on a new venture, start into new territory. For example, I've only had a few cello lessons-I've barely gotten my feet wet. This expression alludes to the timid swimmer slowly getting into the water. [Late 1500s]

See also: feet, get, wet

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

get your feet wet

mainly AMERICAN

If you get your feet wet, you get involved in something or experience something for the first time. Charlton thinks it's time for me to get my feet wet. He says I'll be able to help the department a lot more if I learn how police actually solve crimes. Note: You can also say that you have your feet wet. Well, the Secretary of State now has his feet wet in the Middle East.

See also: feet, get, wet

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

get your feet wet

begin to participate in an activity.

See also: feet, get, wet

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

get your ˈfeet wet

(especially American English, informal) start doing something that is new for you: At that time he was a young actor, just getting his feet wet.

See also: feet, get, wet

get (one's) feet wet

To start a new activity or job.

See also: feet, get, wet

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

get one's feet wet, to

To venture into new territory. The allusion here is to the timid swimmer who is wary of getting into the water at all. Although this particular expression dates only from the early twentieth century, a similar idea was expressed more than four hundred years earlier by John Lyly in Euphues and his England (1580): “I resemble those that hauing once wet their feete, care not hoe deepe they wade”; in other words, once having gotten up one’s nerve to try something new, one is more willing to plunge in all the way. In The Glorious Fault (1960) Leonard Mosley combined two metaphors: “In parliamentary life, he [Curzon] was to be one who stayed to get his feet wet before deciding that a ship was sinking.”