Plead the text naturally. The original post can be found at https://dictionaryblog.cambridge.org/2020/01/08/they-gave-him-the-cold-shoulder-idiomatic-phrases-with-cold/ It will be easier for you to read the post there. Thank you!
They gave him the cold shoulder: Idiomatic phrases with “cold”
By Liz Walter on January 8, 2020
Last month I looked at phrases containing the word “hot,” and this month I am looking at the opposite: phrases containing the word “cold.” Whereas “hot” phrases are mostly concerned either with very good things or with strong emotions, “cold” phrases are usually negative. We often use them to describe fear, unfriendliness or lack of emotion.
For instance, if you “give someone the cold shoulder,” you ignore them or act in an unfriendly way towards them, even though you know them. We can also say that someone “gets/is given the cold shoulder” when this happens to them:
+ She gave me the cold shoulder when I tried to talk to her.
+ Max did his best to be friendly to Lucas, but he got the cold shoulder.
If we say that someone does something cruel, especially killing someone, “in cold blood,” we mean that they do it in a calm, cruel way and do not seem to feel any emotion. We often describe a particularly cruel act or the person that commits that act as “cold-blooded”:
+ Armed men burst into his house and shot him in cold blood.
+ Police describe the killing as a ‘cold-blooded murder’.
If someone is “in a cold sweat,” they are very scared or worried. We say that people “break out in a cold sweat” when they start to feel like this:
+ When Julian saw that the money was gone, he broke out in a cold sweat.
Someone who is “cold-hearted” does not feel any sympathy for other people. We sometimes call someone like this a “cold fish”:
+ Cold-hearted thieves stole her son’s new bike.
+ His new girlfriend seems a bit of a cold fish.
If we describe something that should make a bad situation better as “cold comfort,” we meant that it does not make it better, or only makes it very slightly better:
+ It was cold comfort to discover that several other people had been tricked in the same way.
In a very visual idiom, if someone “pours/throws cold water on” an idea, plan or opinion, they say negative things about it and stop people being excited by it:
+ My teachers poured cold water on my ambition to become a footballer.
I will finish with a nice idiom that has both “hot” and “cold” in it. If you “blow hot and cold about” something or someone, you are sometimes positive about them and sometimes negative:
+ I’m not sure if she’s happy at university. She keeps blowing hot and cold about it.
Do you have similar “cold” phrases in your first language? Let us know in the comments!
