cold case
cold case noun: a criminal investigation that has not been solved after a considerable time but remains on the books and may be reopened when new evidence appears.
Noun
cold case (plural cold cases)
- A criminal investigation that has not been solved after a considerable time but remains on the books and may be reopened when new evidence appears.
- ‘I had my researchers check the files on all the mispers and cold cases five years either side of that date estimate, on females of that approximate age. This is what they found. Fill your boots.’ He took a large gulp of his drink. / ‘I’m impressed, you've been moving fast.’ / ‘On it like a car...2015, Peter James, You Are Dead, New York, N.Y.: Minotaur Books, →ISBN
- A refrigerated display case used for selling items that are kept cold.
- We'd each grab a twenty-ounce Coke from the cold case, and at the end of the movie, Kate would still have a nearly full bottle.2015, Andie Mitchell, It Was Me All Along: A Memoir, →ISBN, page 61
Forms of cold case
| plural | cold cases |
|---|
Questions about cold case
- What does cold case mean?
- Cold case means a criminal investigation that has not been solved after a considerable time but remains on the books and may be reopened when new evidence appears.
- What part of speech is cold case?
- Cold case is a noun.
- What is the plural of cold case?
- The plural of cold case is cold cases.
Words near cold case in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cold case (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-cold case.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cold case.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cold_case. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.