Meaning & use
kick your feet up
Last updated
Meaning
phraseidiominformal
to relax, especially by sitting down and resting your feet after standing or working.
Grammar: Used as an intransitive verb phrase; often followed by 'and relax' or 'for a while'. The possessive adjective changes with the subject: kick his feet up, kick their feet up.
Patterns
- kick your feet up
- kick your feet up and relax
- kick your feet up for a while
After a long day at work, I just want to kick my feet up and watch TV.
He kicked his feet up on the sofa and fell asleep.
We kicked our feet up for an hour before dinner.
Common combinations
- kick your feet up and relax
- You've been working all day; kick your feet up and relax.
- put your feet up
- Put your feet up for a few minutes while I make tea.
- take a load off your feet
- Sit down and take a load off your feet.
Synonyms and how they differ
- put your feet up
- This is a more common and slightly more neutral way to say the same thing; it often implies resting after standing.
- relax
- A general word that does not include the image of resting your feet; 'kick your feet up' is more specific and informal.
- unwind
- Focuses on reducing stress, not necessarily on the physical position of your feet.
Commonly confused: kick your feet up or kick up your feet?
kick your feet up vs kick up your feet
This is a less common variant, but 'kick your feet up' is the standard idiom.
Practice
Choose the correct sentence:
Choose one answer.
The idiom is 'kick your feet up', and it is followed by the base form of a verb in a parallel structure: 'kick ... and read'. Option 1 uses a different word order that is not standard for this idiom. Option 2 uses 'reading' instead of 'read', which breaks the parallel structure. Option 3 uses 'reads', which does not agree with the subject 'she' in this construction.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “kick your feet up”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.