give someone the cold shoulder
Formsgives someone the cold shoulder, giving someone the cold shoulder, gave someone the cold shoulder, given someone the cold shoulder
- 1To snub or reject someone, treating them with deliberate coldness and emotional distance.
Like a door someone keeps firmly shut against you, no matter how often you knock.
Ever since the betrayal, his former colleagues have given him the cold shoulder at every meeting.
She gave her sister the cold shoulder throughout the wedding, refusing to even make eye contact.
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Origin
The expression was first recorded in Scots in 1816 by Sir Walter Scott. It, along with its German equivalent, arose as a mistranslation of the Latin phrase dederunt umerum recedentem from the Book of Nehemiah in the Vulgate Bible, which actually means "stubbornly they turned their backs on you": the confusion arising because Latin umerus meant both "shoulder" and "back."