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cold fish

noun

Informal.

a person who is very reserved or aloof in manner or who lacks normal cordiality, sympathy, or other feeling.

cold fish

noun

an unemotional and unfriendly person

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Word History and Origins

Origin of cold fish¹

First recorded in 1940–45

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Idioms and Phrases

A hard-hearted, unfeeling individual, one who shows no emotion, as in Not even the eulogy moved him; he's a real cold fish. This expression was used by Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale (4:4): “It was thought she was a woman, and was turn'd into a cold fish.” However, it came into wider use only in the first half of the 1900s.

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

As Alfred Uhry’s book — also a Tony winner — relates, Leo, the manager of a pencil factory owned by Lucille’s uncle, is a misfit in Atlanta: a New York Jew but also a cold fish.

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Episodes of the popular television series “The Crown” portrayed him as a cold fish, a cruel man, uncomfortable with himself.

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If being a cold fish is, as the cliché would have it, a British quality, then the series is very British indeed.

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The buffet table included pickled salads, pâté, cold fish wraps and twarog — something like a white farmer cheese — most of which we also piled on our plates.

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A bowl of cold fish is almost mandatory.

From

cold feet cold frame

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