vote with one's feet
/ˈvoʊt wɪð wʌnz ˈfiːt/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.23 in modern English
28
Scrabble Score
16
Letters
2
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To express one's preferences through one's actions, by voluntarily participating in or withdrawing from an activity, group, or process; especially, by physical migration to leave a situation one does not like, or to move to a situation one regards as more beneficial.
Example Sentences
- "But Khrushchev's economic plan for the East Germans means a new kind of dependence on their old Russian foes, and its fulfillment is a political question—on which East Germans, whatever their phony 99.9% elections say, still vote with their feet by fleeing West at the rate of 2,000 a week."
- "That would enable the students to "vote with their feet" for programs of proven excellence and presumably for fields where the most jobs are available."
- "TWA expects that its lounger will keep it flying high in transatlantic business, where it now leads all other airlines. Says Jesse Liebman, a TWA vice president: "Passengers vote with their feet.""
- "Please, vote with your feet—participate in IAP."
- "Then again, I knew that shareholder democracy meant only that I should vote with my feet if I didn't like what management was doing."
- "The conventional wisdom ca. 1980 was that if an investor did not like the way a firm was managed, she could vote with her feet, moving her money elsewhere."
Etymology
Probably based on the practice of pedibus in sententiam ire in the Roman Senate, but the phrase in its modern sense was popularized by Lenin, through whom it gained some currency in left-wing parlance in various languages. It became more widely known when Western journalists and politicians started using it, not without mockery, in reference to those individuals who fled Communist East Germany towards the West between 1945 and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961.