# give someone the cold shoulder

Pronunciation: US say "giv sum-wun thuh kohld SHOHL-der" /ɡɪv ˌsʌmwʌn ðə ˌkoʊld ˈʃoʊldɚ/; UK say "giv sum-wun thuh kohld SHOHL-duh" /ɡɪv ˌsʌmwʌn ðə ˌkəʊld ˈʃəʊldə/; AUS say "giv SUM-wun thuh kohld SHOHL-duh"

## Idiom

1. To snub or reject someone, treating them with deliberate coldness and emotional distance.
   - Simple: To treat someone in a cold, unfriendly way to show you do not want them around.
   - _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._

## 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."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/give-someone-the-cold-shoulder (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).