Word.ws English Dictionary

cold open

cold open noun: an opening segment shown before the opening credits, often there is no context given to the segment.

Noun

cold open (plural cold opens)

  1. An opening segment shown before the opening credits, often there is no context given to the segment.
    • The best way to find out how the series you're writing for uses teasers or cold opens is to get your hands on a script.2004, James Mendrinos, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Comedy Writing
    • Colin Jost and Michael Che cover the same ground as the cold open, reporting on Trump’s clown car cabinet picks […].2024 November 17, Zach Vasquez, “Saturday Night Live: Charli xcx has fun in otherwise middle of the road episode”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Antonyms of cold open

Forms of cold open

pluralcold opens

Origin of cold open

From cold (“completely unprepared; without introduction”) + open.

Questions about cold open

What does cold open mean?
Cold open means an opening segment shown before the opening credits, often there is no context given to the segment.
What part of speech is cold open?
Cold open is a noun.
What is the plural of cold open?
The plural of cold open is cold opens.

Words near cold open in the dictionary

  1. cold moon
  2. cold moons
  3. Cold Norton
  4. cold one
  5. cold ones
  6. cold open
  7. cold opens
  8. cold pack
  9. cold packs
  10. cold patch
  11. cold patched

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cold open (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:

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