Word.ws English Dictionary

stop cold

stop cold verb: to halt suddenly and completely.

Verb

stop cold (third-person singular simple present stops cold, present participle stopping cold, simple past and past participle stopped cold)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive, transitive) To halt suddenly and completely.
    Synonyms:
    stop on a dime

Synonyms of stop cold

  • stop on a dime

Forms of stop cold

third-person singular presentstops cold
present participlestopping cold
past participlestopped cold
paststopped cold

Questions about stop cold

What does stop cold mean?
Stop cold means to halt suddenly and completely.
What part of speech is stop cold?
Stop cold is a verb.
What is the past tense of stop cold?
The past tense of stop cold is stopped cold.

Words near stop cold in the dictionary

  1. stop clock
  2. stop clocks
  3. stop cock
  4. stop cocks
  5. stop codon
  6. stop cold
  7. stop dead
  8. stop down
  9. stop error
  10. stop errors
  11. stop in

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stop cold (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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