on tiptoe

Idioms  

1. Eagerly anticipating something, as in The children were on tiptoe before the birthday party . [Late 1500s]

2. Moving stealthily, warily, as in They went down the hall on tiptoe . [Mid-1700s] Both usages transfer standing on one's toes to a particular reason for doing so; def. 2 alludes to moving more quietly in this fashion.

---

Example Sentences

Eight-year-old Willow Lopez stood on tiptoe, her chin hooked over the 4-foot steel fence and her heart doing atomic drops as the aging wrestler climbed into the ring at the Sonoma County Fair.

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 29, 2023

But if visitors stand on tiptoe to look past the marvelous fresco over the home’s jagged walls, they’ll see how the back rooms remain embedded under the newly “stabilized” unexcavated edge of Pompeii.

From Seattle Times • Feb. 20, 2022

On my way back, I again passed the Pavilions where, if you stood on tiptoe, you could see that there were waterflowers in bloom in the aquatic courtyard below.

From Washington Post • Jun. 4, 2020

The mother robin, who flies off with an angry twitter when my husband stands on tiptoe to peek into the nest, has shuffled the arrangement of the eggs.

From Salon • May 9, 2020

When they tired out, they stood on tiptoe beyond where the waves broke, jumping gently and letting the water carry them up and down.

From "Genuine Fraud" by E. Lockhart