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cold

Pronunciation: /kəʊld/

The English word “cold” has 20 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Having a low temperature.
  2. Causing the air to be cold.
  3. Feeling the sensation of coldness, especially to the point of discomfort.
  4. Unfriendly; emotionally distant or unfeeling.
  5. Chilled, filled with an uncomfortable sense of fear, dread, or alarm.
  6. Dispassionate; not prejudiced or partisan; impartial.
  7. Completely unprepared; without introduction.
  8. Unconscious or deeply asleep; deprived of the metaphorical heat associated with life or consciousness.
  9. Perfectly, exactly, completely; by heart; down pat.
  10. Cornered; done for.
  11. Cool, impressive.
  12. Not pungent or acrid.
  13. Unexciting; dull; uninteresting.
  14. Affecting the sense of smell (as of hunting dogs) only feebly; having lost its odour.
  15. Not sensitive; not acute.
  16. Distant; said, in the game of hunting for some object, of a seeker remote from the thing concealed. Compare warm and hot.
  17. Having a bluish effect; not warm in colour.
  18. Rarely used or accessed, and thus able to be relegated to slower storage.
  19. Without compassion; heartless; ruthless.
  20. Not radioactive.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English cold, from Anglian Old English cald. The West Saxon form, ċeald (“cold”), survived as early Middle English cheald, cheld, or chald. Both descended from Proto-West Germanic *kald, from Proto-Germanic *kaldaz (“cold”), a participle form of *kalaną (“to be cold, to freeze”), from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to be cold, to freeze”). Cognates Cognate with Scots cauld…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.