Word.ws English Dictionary

cold shouldering

cold shouldering is the present participle and gerund of cold shoulder.

Meaning of cold shoulder

Noun

cold shoulder (plural cold shoulders)

  1. (idiomatic) A deliberate act of disrespect; a slight or snub.
    • Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned toward her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all.1879, Henry James, Daisy Miller, London: Harper & Brothers

Questions about cold shouldering

What is cold shouldering the present participle and gerund of?
Cold shouldering is the present participle and gerund of cold shoulder.

Words near cold shouldering in the dictionary

  1. cold short
  2. cold shoulder
  3. cold shoulder sleeve
  4. cold shoulder sleeves
  5. cold shouldered
  6. cold shouldering
  7. cold shoulders
  8. cold shower
  9. cold showers
  10. cold shut
  11. cold shuts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cold shouldering (page history and authors); 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 shouldering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cold_shouldering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.