Where Did the Phrase ‘Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop’ Come From?

According to The Farlex Dictionary of Idioms, waiting for the other shoe to drop means “to wait for the next, seemingly unavoidable (and typically negative) thing to happen.” So if you’re familiar with the phrase, you’ve likely heard it used in situations where something has happened, and the people involved are left on tenterhooks awaiting the follow up—or, as the saying puts it, “the other shoe.”

But what does waiting for the inevitable have to do with shoes at all?

The Origins of Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

Although the exact origins of this particular phrase are rather hazy, it seems probable that waiting for the other shoe to drop emerged sometime around the early 1900s, most likely in America—all the earliest written records of it come from the United States.

Some sources have also suggested that waiting for the other shoe to drop might be associated with another popular catchphrase of the 1900s. Go on then, drop the other shoe was an aggravated or exasperated exclamation apparently used to prompt someone to come out with something that you just know they’re going to say. It seems to have fallen out of use sometime around the 1930s.

No matter what form this shoe-dropping expression takes, though, the image behind it seems to be a fairly straightforward one: It’s thought to allude to the boarding houses, tenements, and co-living spaces that were commonplace in America at the time.

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A Shoe-Stopping Tale

The story goes that a boarding house residents would arrive home late (perhaps feeling a little worse for wear after a night on the town), collapse onto their bed, and kick one of their shoes off with their other foot, letting it crash down noisily on the wooden floor of their bedroom—loud enough, certainly, for all the other residents (and in particular the unfortunate one downstairs) to hear it. Suddenly realizing all of the noise that they’re making, however, the person then holds off on making any further noise, and so either simply keeps the other shoe on as they woozily drift off to sleep (or takes it off more carefully and lays it silently on the floor).

The poor resident downstairs, however, just knows that there’s a second shoe that’s about to be dropped on the floor, and is left sitting in impatient agony, waiting for the inevitable crash. When no crash comes, of course, they’re left to call out, “Well, go on then! Drop the other shoe!”

It could certainly be possible that this scenario happened so often in the boarding houses of early 20th century America that waiting for the other shoe to drop emerged organically on its own.

A more plausible explanation, though, might be that it emerged from a once-popular music hall joke or theatrical stage skit that has now long been lost to time. Without any further evidence to back that theory up, though, precisely how this scenario came about—as well as the phrases it appears to have inspired—remains something of a mystery.