Word.ws English Dictionary

coldwave

coldwave noun: a European style of post-punk music in the 1980s.

Noun

coldwave (uncountable)

  1. A European style of post-punk music in the 1980s.
    • Band member Azzedine Amrani reflects: “[…] Then, The Cure came to our ears; therefore we started to turn into coldwave music with brand new instruments [such as keyboards and drum machines]^([sic]).”2014, Andi Harriman, Marloes Bontje, Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace: A Worldwide Compendium of Postpunk and Goth in the 1980s, Intellect Books, →ISBN, page 24
  2. (US) The industrial metal music genre in the 1990s.
    • Modern industrial music subgenres and fusion-genres include EBM, futurepop, power-noise, aggrotech (terror-EBM), coldwave, elektro, dark-electro, and industrial-metal. Yes, it can be quite confusing.2007, Raven Digitalis, Goth Craft: The Magickal Side of Dark Culture, →ISBN, page 37

Forms of coldwave

alternative formcold wave

Origin of coldwave

From cold + wave, perhaps influenced by earlier genres such as new wave and darkwave. In France the post-punk genre was called la vague froide.

Questions about coldwave

What does coldwave mean?
Coldwave means a European style of post-punk music in the 1980s.
What part of speech is coldwave?
Coldwave is a noun.

Words near coldwave in the dictionary

  1. Coldwaltham
  2. coldward
  3. coldwater
  4. coldwater flat
  5. coldwater flats
  6. coldwave
  7. Coldwell
  8. Coldwells
  9. coldwork
  10. coldworked
  11. coldworking

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: coldwave (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: “coldwave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/coldwave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.