cold
Noun pluralcolds (some meanings)
Pluralcolds (some meanings)
- 1Having a low temperature; lacking warmth, or making the air or a person feel chilled.
The soup had gone cold by the time she returned to her desk.
January is the coldest month of the year across most of the northern United States.
UsageFood and drinks go cold or get cold: your tea is getting cold.
- 2A condition or environment of low temperature; the absence of warmth.
They stood in the cold for an hour waiting for the parade to start.
Desert animals must cope with intense heat by day and surprising cold at night.
UsageUsually with the: wait in the cold, come in out of the cold.
Similarchill
- 3A widespread, generally mild viral infection of the nose and throat that typically blocks the nose and sometimes brings on a fever.
He came down with a cold two days before the wedding.
Most children catch several colds a year, especially once they start school.
UsageUse a: catch a cold, have a cold, come down with a cold.
Note
Folk advice says to feed a cold and starve a fever. Dr. Jon S. Abramson of Wake Forest Medical School found no medical evidence for that advice, as Hailey Middlebrook reported in 2016, and he objected especially to the starving.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Traditional advice recommends feeding a cold and starving a fever. en.wikipedia.org
- Dr. Jon S. Abramson was affiliated with Wake Forest's medical school. familiesfightingflu.org
- Hailey Middlebrook reported in 2016 that Abramson found no medical evidence supporting the advice and especially objected to starving a fever. ksl.com
- 4Unfriendly, distant, or unfeeling; showing no warmth or compassion toward others, sometimes to the point of cruelty.
After the argument, their relationship turned cold and formal.
She found his cold reply to her heartfelt letter deeply hurtful.
UsageOften cold to or towards someone. The idiom give someone the cold shoulder means ignore them.
Similarfrosty, icy, distant, unfriendly, aloof
Oppositewarm, friendly, affectionate
- 5Feeling a lack of warmth in the body, especially to the point of discomfort.
After an hour of ice fishing, he was cold to the bone despite his layers.
Are you cold? I can close the window.
UsageI'm cold or I feel cold (not
incorrect: I have cold). Freezing is stronger.Similarchilly, freezing, chilled, frozen, shivery
Oppositehot
- 6At a low temperature; without heating or after cooling.
The dish is traditionally served cold, straight from the refrigerator.
The mill rolls the steel cold to improve its strength.
UsageNo -ly here: served cold, eat it cold. Coldly describes manner: answered coldly.
Oppositehot
- 7Of a trail, lead, or investigation, no longer turning up new clues, so that it has stopped making progress.
Investigators admit the case has gone cold since the last witness was interviewed.
Every lead the reporters chased turned cold within days.
UsageUsually go cold or turn cold: the trail went cold. An unsolved case with no remaining leads is a cold case.
Note
The hunting image is still visible: a cold scent is one the hounds can barely follow, and a cold trail is the detective's version. The best-known phrase is cold case, an unsolved investigation set aside for lack of leads and sometimes reopened years later when new evidence appears.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The hunting comparison refers to a scent that hounds have difficulty following. gutenberg.org
- A cold case is an unsolved investigation no longer actively pursued after viable leads have been exhausted. nij.ojp.gov
- Cold cases can be reopened years later when new evidence becomes available. en.wikipedia.org
- 8Completely unprepared, or undertaken without prior introduction, briefing, or rehearsal.
On the first day, the cast did a cold read of the script, stumbling over unfamiliar lines.
Sales reps dread making cold calls to customers who have never heard of the company.
UsageBefore a noun: a cold call, a cold read, a cold email.
Similarunprepared, unready
Oppositeready, prepared, primed
Note
The adjective of selling and canvassing gives us cold calls and the cold canvass. Kelly D. Harrison's Air Force Cop (2019) describes cold canvassing as the most dreaded exercise for insurance salesmen, and the word marks a contact with no warm-up and no prior relationship. After a verb, the same idea becomes the adverb of going in cold.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Kelly D. Harrison's Air Force Cop describes cold canvassing as the most dreaded exercise for insurance salesmen. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 9Dispassionate and impartial; judging or describing without emotion, prejudice, or partisanship.
The auditor's cold assessment spared neither management nor the board.
Viewed in the cold light of statistics, the team's championship hopes look slim.
UsageBefore nouns like facts, truth and light: the cold facts, in the cold light of day.
Similarimpartial, neutral, objective, unbiased, detached
Oppositebiased, partial, emotional
Note
Here coldness is a virtue: the absence of feeling that lets judgment work. Unlike the unfriendly meaning, it describes a way of seeing rather than a way of treating people. The cold facts may hurt, but nobody is being snubbed.
- 10Unconscious or deeply asleep; unresponsive, as if lacking the warmth of waking life.
The blow to his head knocked him cold for nearly a minute.
She was out cold within seconds of the anesthetic taking effect.
UsageMostly in out cold and knock someone cold.
Similarunconscious, senseless, out
Note
David Walliams's Bad Dad (2017) has a crime boss collapse to the floor, out cold, with the phrase used as a free-standing tag after the action.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- David Walliams wrote Bad Dad, first published in 2017. en.wikipedia.org
- The book describes a crime boss collapsing to the floor and ends that action with the supplementary phrase 'out cold'. en.wiktionary.org
- 11A state or place of neglect, hardship, or exclusion; a condition of being abandoned or shut out.
The merger left longtime suppliers out in the cold.
After a decade of exile, the old dissident was finally welcomed in from the cold.
UsageMostly in out in the cold and in from the cold: left out in the cold.
Note
The phrase does nearly all the work here: someone is left out in the cold, or welcomed in from it. The cold becomes a place of exclusion, and it almost always takes the definite article. The image is of someone shut outside a warm room, such as a politician deserted by friends, rather than of anyone facing real weather.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 1 fact
- The idiom evokes someone left outside in the cold instead of being admitted somewhere warm. en.wiktionary.org
- 12Of a player or team, going through a stretch of poor form, especially one marked by failing to score or to shoot accurately.
After a hot start, the home team went cold in the third quarter, hitting just 4 of 20 shots.
Even the league's best hitters run cold for a week or two every season.
UsageUsually go cold or run cold; the opposite is hot: a cold streak, a hot streak.
Oppositehot
Note
Sports talk treats form as temperature, and this is the low end of the scale. The word describes a spell, not a lasting quality: a cold player is expected to warm up again.
- 13Filled with an uncomfortable, chilling sense of fear, dread, or alarm.
A cold dread settled over the crew as the storm closed in.
He turned cold at the thought of what could have happened to the children.
UsageOften go cold or turn cold with fear, or a cold dread.
Similarapprehensive
Note
Here fear registers as a chill in the body. Tennyson uses it in In Memoriam (1850): "A spectral doubt which makes me cold." That is what separates it from the shivering sense: nothing outside has changed temperature.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Tennyson wrote In Memoriam, first published in 1850. en.wikisource.org
- In Memoriam contains the quoted wording. en.wikisource.org
- 14Without preparation or rehearsal; with no advance work or warning.
She delivered the closing argument cold after her co-counsel fell ill.
Most stand-up comedians refuse to perform new material cold.
UsageFollows the verb or its object: go in cold, open cold, perform it cold.
Similarspontaneously
Note
Theater people use it of a show that opens with no out-of-town tryout. Mary Roberts Rinehart's Cheer Up was set to open cold under a young Cecil B. DeMille. It sits close to the "unprepared" adjective: the adverb says how something is done, and the adjective describes the state of the person.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote Cheer Up. ibdb.com
- Cheer Up was planned to open without an out-of-town tryout under a young Cecil B. DeMille. en.wiktionary.org
- 15In the children's hunting game, far from the hidden object; the opposite of warm or hot.
"Colder, colder," her brother teased as she wandered away from the closet where he had hidden her gift.
The kids shouted that he was cold whenever he drifted away from the hiding spot.
UsageCommon phrases in the game: you're cold, getting colder.
- 16Mastered perfectly or known by heart; learned down to the last detail.
By opening night she had every line of the play cold.
He knew the merger agreement cold and answered every question without notes.
UsageComes after the object, mostly with know or have: know your lines cold.
Similarpat
Note
Mastery is expressed after the object, never before a noun: know them cold, have them cold, have them down cold, memorize it cold. The verb is nearly always know or have, and the object is something learned, such as scales, lines, maneuvers or a list. The same frame with a person as its object belongs to the "cornered" meaning.
- 17Tending toward blue in tone; lacking the warmth associated with reds, oranges, and yellows.
The portrait's cold palette gives the sitter a remote, wintry presence.
Morning light from a north window is cold compared with the golden light of late afternoon.
UsagePaired with warm: cold colors, cold light, a cold palette.
Similarbluish
Oppositewarm
Note
A painter calls a color cold as a judgment about its effect, not as a measurement. The color leans toward blue and away from warmth. A canvas can feel cold even when it shows a summer scene, if blue dominates its shadows and highlights.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Warmth and coldness in painting describe an associative, relative effect rather than a physical temperature measurement. nationalgallery.org.uk
- Dominant blues can give an image a cold feeling; the summer scene is a hypothetical illustration of this effect. nationalgeographic.com
- 18Remarkably good, stylish, or impressive.
Everyone agreed the DJ's set was cold from start to finish.
He pulled up in a cold vintage Mustang that turned every head on the block.
Similarsick, dope, fire, fresh, slick
Note
Slang praise that makes the same leap from temperature to approval as cool. Paolo Songco, writing in 2023, calls a Steph Curry photo cold, and posts call an outfit "the coldest thing ever." A line like "she so cold for that" could also carry the "heartless" meaning, and only context tells admiration from reproach.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Paolo Songco described a Steph Curry photo as cold in 2023. clutchpoints.com
- An online post describes an outfit using the quoted phrase. en.wiktionary.org
- The illustrative wording “she so cold for that” is attested. en.wiktionary.org
- 19Trapped with no avenue of escape; cornered and certain to be caught or defeated.
The prosecutor had the defendant cold: fingerprints, video, and two eyewitnesses.
Once the auditors traced the missing funds to his account, they had him cold.
UsageMostly have someone cold, with for + the charge: have him cold for fraud.
Note
A prosecutor's or interrogator's word: with that receipt, we have them cold for fraud. The frame matches the "by heart" meaning, with have, then an object, then cold. Here, though, the object is a person, and the point is that denial has run out. Wodehouse uses it in Jeeves in the Offing (1960) for leverage over a rival.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Jeeves in the Offing was first published as a book in 1960. openlibrary.org
- Wodehouse uses cold in the cornered sense in Jeeves in the Offing. en.wiktionary.org
- The passage concerns leverage over an adversary: Bobbie withholds Upjohn’s speech to secure withdrawal of his libel suit. en.wikipedia.org
- 20Drawing little interest or demand, or seeing little activity, as can happen to a market or to an idea that was once popular.
Investor appetite for the sector has turned cold since the last round of startup failures.
The idea of a four-day workweek, so popular a few years ago, has gone cold in most boardrooms.
UsageOften go cold or turn cold. A related idiom, leave someone cold, means fail to interest them.
Oppositehot
Note
Interest is pictured as heat here too: people warm to an idea, a popular one is hot, and one that has lost its following has gone cold. Business writing uses it of whole sectors, as when a once-booming market turns cold.
- 21
- 22Lacking interest or liveliness; dull, flat, and unengaging.
What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the better part of life in!
1641, Ben Jonson, Discoveries Made upon Men and MatterSimilardull, boring, bland, flat, lifeless
Note
Dullness was once called cold, a use now obsolete and easy for a modern reader to misread. Ben Jonson in 1641 laments the "cold business" that wastes the better part of a life. Addison in 1705 notes that "the jest grows cold" when it comes on in a second scene. The verb grow suits the sense, since a joke cools as it loses its spark.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 5 facts
- Cold historically meant dull or uninteresting. en.wiktionary.org
- Jonson's relevant work, Timber, or Discoveries, was first published in 1641. rpo.library.utoronto.ca
- Jonson laments wasting much of life on 'cold business'. gutenberg.org
- Addison's Remarks on Several Parts of Italy was first published in 1705. collections.soane.org
- Addison writes that 'the jest grows cold' when a disguise returns in a second scene. esf.ccarh.org
- 23In a frank, blunt, or unvarnished manner; without softening or embellishment.
Similarbluntly, frankly, straight, plainly, candidly
Oppositegently, tactfully, diplomatically
Note
This adverb is dated slang, and its position is the surprise. In Run-DMC's "Peter Piper" (1986), a line about the nursery-rhyme shepherdess losing her flock places the word before the verb to flag a blunt statement of fact.
- 24Dull in perception or feeling; lacking sharpness or acuteness.
Smell this business with a sense as cold / As is a dead man's nose.
c. 1610, William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”Note
Shakespeare gives the clearest picture of this obsolete use in The Winter's Tale: "You smell this business with a sense as cold / As is a dead man's nose." A cold sense was a blunted one, unable to register what was in front of it. Modern English has dropped the use, and dull or blunted now covers the same ground.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 3 facts
- William Shakespeare wrote The Winter's Tale. en.wikipedia.org
- Leontes says, "You smell this business with a sense as cold / As is a dead man's nose" in Act 2, scene 1. The item omits "You". internetshakespeare.uvic.ca
- A cold sense meant a blunted or unacute sense. en.wiktionary.org
- 25Mild and bland to the taste or smell; lacking pungency or sharpness.
Note
An obsolete sense to recognize rather than use. When Francis Bacon wrote of "cold plants", he meant mild ones with no bite, plants that could be called neutral. He did not mean chilled leaves. Philip K. Dick's "cold plants" of 1953 are something else again: food free of radioactivity.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- Francis Bacon used the phrase "cold plants". wythepedia.wm.edu
- Sylva Sylvarum was first published posthumously in 1626; a variant has a 1627 title page. The publication date is not a date of writing. nora.nerc.ac.uk
- Bacon's phrase exemplifies cold meaning mild or lacking pungency, rather than chilled. en.wiktionary.org
- Philip K. Dick's use dates from 1953. en.wikipedia.org
- Dick used the exact phrase "cold plants" in dialogue. archive.org
- Cold in Dick's phrase means nonradioactive food. en.wiktionary.org
- 26In a sudden and complete way, so that a person or thing is brought to an abrupt and total stop.
The linebacker met the running back at the line and stopped him cold.
A last-minute filibuster stopped the bill cold in the Senate.
UsageMostly with stop: stopped cold, stopped him cold, placed after the verb or its object.
Similardead
Note
A chiefly American intensifier that keeps to stop and its near relatives: the deal stopped cold, the defense stopped him cold. It behaves like dead in stopped dead, adding suddenness and finality; nothing about temperature survives in it.
- 27Receiving no electrical power; disconnected from any live supply so that no current flows.
- 28Of computer data, rarely accessed and so suitable for moving to slower, cheaper storage.
- 29Containing no live round of ammunition and therefore unable to discharge a live shot.
- 30Not radioactive; giving off no nuclear radiation.
- 31Dried mucus that collects in the corners of the eyes during sleep; rheum.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
Anglian Old English cald became Middle English cold, while the West Saxon form ċeald lived on into early Middle English. The word traces back to Proto-Germanic *kaldaz, a participle of *kalaną ("to be cold"), and to Proto-Indo-European *gel- ("cold"). German kalt and Dutch koud are related.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 6 facts
- Middle English cold descends from Anglian Old English cald. en.wiktionary.org
- West Saxon ċeald survived into early Middle English. en.wiktionary.org
- Cold derives from Proto-Germanic *kaldaz, originally a participle of *kalaną. en.wiktionary.org
- Proto-Germanic *kalaną meant 'to be cold'. en.wiktionary.org
- The word ultimately derives from Proto-Indo-European *gel-, a root referring to cold or freezing. en.wiktionary.org
- German kalt and Dutch koud are cognates of English cold. en.wiktionary.org
From Middle English 'cold', from Old English 'cald', 'ċeald' ('cold, coldness'), from Proto-Germanic *kaldą ('coldness'), from Proto-Indo-European *gel- ('cold'). It is related to German 'Kälte' and Dutch 'koude'.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- The noun descends from Middle English cold and Old English cald, ċeald, meaning ‘cold, coldness’. en.wiktionary.org
- Its ancestry includes Proto-Germanic *kaldą, meaning ‘coldness’. en.wiktionary.org
- Its ultimate root is Proto-Indo-European *gel-, meaning ‘cold’. en.wiktionary.org
- The noun is related to German Kälte and Dutch koude. en.wiktionary.org
Old English calde or ċealde ("coldly"), built from the adjective, became Middle English colde.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Old English calde or ċealde meant “coldly”. en.wiktionary.org
- The Old English adverb was formed from the adjective. en.wiktionary.org
- The Old English adverb developed into Middle English colde. en.wiktionary.org