Word.ws English Dictionary

cold comfort

cold comfort noun: much less reassurance, consolation, aid, or pleasure than one needs or desires.

Noun

cold comfort (countable and uncountable, plural cold comforts)

  1. (idiomatic) Much less reassurance, consolation, aid, or pleasure than one needs or desires.
    • […] or ſhall I complaine on thee to our miſtris, whoſe hand / (ſhe being now at hand) thou ſhalt ſoone feele, to thy / cold comfort, for being ſlow in thy hot office.c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • The table was smoking and hissing; and Romeo Clawbonny, who acted as the everyday house-servant, or footman, had several times intimated that it might be well to commence operations, as a cold breakfast was very cold comfort.1863, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 6, in Miles Wallingford

cold comfort meaning in Bengali

cold comfort in Bengali

সান্ত্বনা, সাহায্য, আনন্দ

Examples of cold comfort in a sentence

  • It was cold comfort I presume, but yet I derived some slight peace of mind from the contemplation of it.1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter 9, in At the Earth's Core:
  • But statistics are cold comfort when the latest explosion has leveled a nearby building.2010 April 8, Ben Lando, “U.S. Officials Downplay Rash of Baghdad Attacks”, in Time, archived from the original on 18 Jul 2013:
  • Bondi’s departure from his cabinet on Thursday, he offered the customary false praise and cold comfort that accompany such defenestrations.2026 April 2, Jeffrey Toobin, “The One Thing Trump Wanted That Pam Bondi Failed to Deliver”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

Forms of cold comfort

pluralcold comforts

Origin of cold comfort

Popularized by William Shakespeare in The Taming of the Shrew, see quotations.

Questions about cold comfort

What does cold comfort mean?
Cold comfort means much less reassurance, consolation, aid, or pleasure than one needs or desires.
What is cold comfort in Bengali?
Cold comfort in Bengali is সান্ত্বনা, সাহায্য, আনন্দ. See Cold comfort meaning in Bengali.
How do you use cold comfort in a sentence?
It was cold comfort I presume, but yet I derived some slight peace of mind from the contemplation of it.
What part of speech is cold comfort?
Cold comfort is a noun.
What is the plural of cold comfort?
The plural of cold comfort is cold comforts.

Words near cold comfort in the dictionary

  1. cold cocking
  2. cold cocks
  3. cold coffee
  4. cold collation
  5. cold collations
  6. cold comfort
  7. cold comforts
  8. cold cook
  9. cold cooks
  10. cold cream
  11. cold creams

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cold comfort (page history and authors); cold comfort (Bengali Wiktionary) (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 comfort.ogg.

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