put one's foot down on

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

put one's foot down on (third-person singular simple present puts one's foot down on, present participle putting one's foot down on, simple past and past participle put one's foot down on)

1. (idiomatic) To put a stop to, suppress; to reject.
   • 1883 May 2, Hansard:

     Mr. Warton said, he was delighted that the President of the Board of Trade had put his foot down upon the insane scheme of those self-constituted humbugs called Chambers of Commerce.

   • 1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 21”, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC:

     'And say it bloody firmly, by God. We want to put our foot down on this idea once and for all.'

   • 1939 January 30, “Exit Schacht”, in Time:

     The last way to get money is to make more of it. Dr. Schacht who had pulled Germany out of the horrors of the 1923 inflation, put his foot down on printing more money.

   • 2016 February 18, Free Malaysia Today:

     Deputy Youth and Sports Minister M Saravanan put his foot down on a suggestion mooted yesterday by a Youth Parliament member to legalise the use of marijuana, also known as ganja, in the country.

Alternative forms

• put one's foot down upon