Word.ws English Dictionary

given someone the cold shoulder

given someone the cold shoulder is the past participle of give someone the cold shoulder.

Meaning of give someone the cold shoulder

Verb

give someone the cold shoulder (third-person singular simple present gives someone the cold shoulder, present participle giving someone the cold shoulder, simple past gave someone the cold shoulder, past participle given someone the cold shoulder)

  1. (idiomatic) To snub, resist or reject somebody; to regard somebody distantly.
    • I must have made him angry with my comment. He’s been giving me the cold shoulder ever since I said it.

Questions about given someone the cold shoulder

What is given someone the cold shoulder the past participle of?
Given someone the cold shoulder is the past participle of give someone the cold shoulder.

Words near given someone the cold shoulder in the dictionary

  1. given someone the bag
  2. given someone the boot
  3. given someone the brush-off
  4. given someone the business
  5. given someone the chair
  6. given someone the cold shoulder
  7. given someone the creeps
  8. given someone the eye
  9. given someone the gears
  10. given someone the heave-ho
  11. given someone the old heave-ho

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: given someone the cold shoulder (page history and authors); give someone the 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “given someone the cold shoulder.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/given_someone_the_cold_shoulder. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.