kick up one's heels

present singular third person kicks up one's heels · participle present kicking up one's heels · participle past kicked up one's heels · past kicked up one's heels

1. figurativelyTo dance.

   Above the peals of laughter with which the words were received, rose Jake's voice, "Come on, ole fiddler, play somefin a nigger kin kick up his heels to; what's de use of singing after dat fashion; dis aint no meetin."

   1852, Mary Henderson Eastman, chapter XI, in Aunt Phillis's Cabin

   1 more example

   He does not get on so well in the evening and night time, when his youthful audience has dispersed, and has been replaced by adults of the tag-rag and draggle-tail breed who have no taste for any tunes but those they can vigorously kick up their heels to, […] .

   1881, James Greenwood, Low-Life Deeps, Chapter 16: A Cockney Holiday

2. idiomaticTo relax; to enjoy oneself; to do as one pleases.

   "Therefore he has a right, for a change, to 'kick up his heels?"

   1904, Henry James, chapter XVI, in The Golden Bowl

   2 more examples

   Everybody laughed, for he was a clumsy and comical beast to be decorated with roses and daisies. But the lady is proud of him, and now that pampered donkey has nothing to do but pull her Bath chair about, when she is at Holly Lodge, and kick up his heels on a clover pasture.

   1912, Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson, chapter XII, in Greyfriar's Bobby

   With a sum like that the fellow might easily kick up his heels, as the saying is, and run away, not only out of the village, but even out of the District.

   1916, Vladimir Korolenko, translated by Marian Fell, The Day of Atonement

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see kick, up, one's, heels.

   If a swimmer kicks up his heels and splashes the water, the judge will take points off accordingly.