Word.ws English Dictionary

cold cash

cold cash noun: money, regarded as an incentive that can override any doubts or ethical concerns.

Noun

cold cash (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) Money, regarded as an incentive that can override any doubts or ethical concerns.
  2. Ready money.
    • "Promises, especially from Joe Larkin, will go a long way, though they don't rouse the white hot enthusiasm that cold cash in the pocket does."1904, David Graham Phillips, chapter 19, in The Cost
    • "I wouldn't cross that rock wall for a hundred thousand dollars in cold cash."1917, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 5, in The Yukon Trail
  3. (archaic) Specie (as contrasted with paper money).

Examples of cold cash in a sentence

  • [H]ighways, dams and research laboratories have lost their primacy; cold cash—for pensions, doctors and hospitals—has taken over.2000 October 15, Matthew Miller, “The Big Federal Freeze”, in New York Times, retrieved 16 Jul 2013:
  • Wilfong, a former state legislator, wants to turn that resource into cold cash.2005 December 12, Jyoti Thottham, “War on the Water Front”, in Time:

Synonyms of cold cash

Questions about cold cash

What does cold cash mean?
Cold cash means money, regarded as an incentive that can override any doubts or ethical concerns.
How do you use cold cash in a sentence?
[H]ighways, dams and research laboratories have lost their primacy; cold cash—for pensions, doctors and hospitals—has taken over.
What part of speech is cold cash?
Cold cash is a noun.

Words near cold cash in the dictionary

  1. cold capping
  2. cold caps
  3. cold carl
  4. cold case
  5. cold cases
  6. cold cash
  7. cold cathode
  8. cold cathodes
  9. cold chain
  10. cold chains
  11. cold chills

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cold cash (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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