Word.ws English Dictionary

cold-shoulder

cold-shoulder verb: to disrespect (someone), especially by ignoring them; to slight, to snub.

Verb

cold-shoulder (third-person singular simple present cold-shoulders, present participle cold-shouldering, simple past and past participle cold-shouldered)

  1. (transitive) To disrespect (someone), especially by ignoring them; to slight, to snub.
    • Perhaps I want to get even with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year—put it that way if it sounds better.1905, Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC
    • There had been the lamentable case of Sledonti, the dramatic poet, who had been belittled and cold-shouldered in the Owl Street hall of judgment, and had been afterwards hailed as a master singer by the Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovitch […].1914, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “(please specify the chapter or story)”, in Beasts and Super-Beasts […], London: John Lane, The Bodley Head […], →OCLC

Examples of cold-shoulder in a sentence

  • Not that any department of the work here is neglected or cold-shouldered, I hope—no, I am sure it isn't.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries:
  • If the peculiar Mr Heaton had first accosted her yesterday instead of six weeks ago, she would have cold-shouldered him without hesitation.2006, Michel Faber, The Apple, Canongate Books, page 23:

Forms of cold-shoulder

third-person singular presentcold-shoulders
present participlecold-shouldering
past participlecold-shouldered
pastcold-shouldered

Questions about cold-shoulder

What does cold-shoulder mean?
Cold-shoulder means to disrespect (someone), especially by ignoring them; to slight, to snub.
How do you use cold-shoulder in a sentence?
Not that any department of the work here is neglected or cold-shouldered, I hope—no, I am sure it isn't.
What part of speech is cold-shoulder?
Cold-shoulder is a verb.
What is the past tense of cold-shoulder?
The past tense of cold-shoulder is cold-shouldered.

Words near cold-shoulder in the dictionary

  1. cold-pressed
  2. cold-presses
  3. cold-pressing
  4. cold-sensitive
  5. cold-short
  6. cold-shoulder
  7. cold-shouldered
  8. cold-shouldering
  9. cold-shoulders
  10. cold-shut
  11. cold-shuts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cold-shoulder (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cold-shoulder.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cold-shoulder. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.