Meaning
To act with deliberate slowness because you are unwilling to do something; to stall, procrastinate or hold back progress. Almost always implies reluctance, resistance or quiet obstruction rather than simple lateness, and it is usually said in criticism of another person or institution, though it can be self-directed. Informal and usually critical, suggesting that the slowness is deliberate rather than accidental. Regional use: General English.
Origin
A documented American coinage of the mid-1940s: the Online Etymology Dictionary records the figurative sense 'delay deliberately' from 1946, and the Oxford English Dictionary's earliest evidence for the related noun 'foot-dragging' is 1947, in the New York Times. The underlying image is the literal one of shuffling or dragging the feet when walking somewhere reluctantly. Etymonline adds that the phrase is 'supposedly' from logging, where a lazy sawyer on a two-man crosscut saw lets the blade drag instead of pulling his share; the source itself flags this as unverified, so it is a plausible story rather than established fact. The parallel variant 'drag one's heels' has the same shape and meaning.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- drag one's feet
- drag your heels
- dragging your feet
- foot-dragging
Usage Examples
- The committee has been dragging its feet on the safety report for months.
- Don't drag your feet about booking the venue, or every slot will be taken.
- Critics accused the ministry of dragging its feet over the flood defences.