kick one's heels
"kick-one-s-heels" is a 13-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“kick one's heels” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 16
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - To wait; to wait impatiently or restlessly.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | kick one's heels |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Verb |
| Letters | 16 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “kick one's heels” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
kick one's heels is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
No misspelling variants are generated for kick one's heels in our index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, since nothing in our dataset looks or sounds close enough to cause mix-ups.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest explained by how it's pronounced rather than where it came from. The correct English form is kick one's heels, spelled K-I-C-K- -O-N-E-'-S- -H-E-E-L-S.
Definition
- 1To wait; to wait impatiently or restlessly.
- 2Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see kick, heels.
Synonyms
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “kick one's heels”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is K-I-C-K- -O-N-E-'-S- -H-E-E-L-S - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.