STOP COLD Definition & Meaning

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stop cold

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Idioms and Phrases

Also, stop dead or in one's tracks or on a dime . Halt suddenly, come to a standstill, as in When a thread breaks, the machine just stops cold , or He was so surprised to see them in the audience that he stopped dead in the middle of his speech , or The deer saw the hunter and stopped in its tracks , or An excellent skateboarder, she could stop on a dime . The first term uses cold in the sense “suddenly and completely,” a usage dating from the late 1800s. The first variant was first recorded in 1789 and probably was derived from the slightly older, and still current, come to a dead stop , with the same meaning. The second variant uses in one's tracks in the sense of “on the spot” or “where one is at the moment”; it was first recorded in 1824. The third variant alludes to the dime or ten-cent piece, the smallest-size coin.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

To stop cold air getting in and heat escaping, consider:

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To stop cold air getting in and heat escaping consider:

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The good news, however, is that there are several ways you can stop cold air from seeping into your home, many of which are easy and affordable to implement before winter arrives.

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But “people should not stop cold turkey. They should do so slowly,” Dr. Horowitz said, and ideally under the supervision of a doctor.

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“His only option to force change is to refuse to deliver products, and that cannot happen: He can’t keep oil and gas from coming out of the ground without capping wells, and storage capacity will get filled very fast if shipments stop cold. ”

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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