Heel, Heels

(Anglo-Saxon hēl.)

Achillesʹ heel. (See under Achilles.)

I showed him a fair pair of heels. I ran away and outran them.

“Two of them saw me when I went out of doors, and chased me, but I showed them a fair pair of heels.”—Sir W. Scott: Peveril of the Peak, chap. xxiv.

Out at heels. In a sad plight, in decayed circumstances, like a beggar whose stockings are worn out at the heels.

“A good man’s fortune may grow out at heels.”

Shakespeare: King Lear, ii. 2.

To show a light pair of heels. To abscond.

To take to one’s heels. To run off. “In pedes nos conjicĕre.”

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.