Idiom
blow hot and cold
Meaning
To behave inconsistently; to vacillate or to waver, as between extremes of opinion or emotion.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“He blows hot and cold about our weekend plans.”
“You blow hot and cold whenever I ask for your honest opinion.”
“My boss keeps blowing hot and cold on the project, so I never know if we are actually finishing it.”
“The landlord blows hot and cold about fixing the heater, sometimes promising a repair today and then ignoring my calls for a week.”
“The politician continued to blow hot and cold regarding the new tax policy, leaving voters confused about his true intentions.”
Examples
simple
“He blows hot and cold about our weekend plans.”
“You blow hot and cold whenever I ask for your honest opinion.”
contextual
“My boss keeps blowing hot and cold on the project, so I never know if we are actually finishing it.”
“The landlord blows hot and cold about fixing the heater, sometimes promising a repair today and then ignoring my calls for a week.”
complex
“The politician continued to blow hot and cold regarding the new tax policy, leaving voters confused about his true intentions.”
Origin
The expression originates from Aesop’s fable The Satyr and the Traveller, in which a satyr observes his human companion blowing on his hands to warm them and then blowing on his soup to cool it. Distrusting a creature capable of producing both heat and cold from the same mouth with the same breath, the satyr promptly terminates the friendship. The idiom entered English as a metaphor for such inconsistency, though modern social consequences are generally less abrupt than those suffered by the traveller.
Key words
Related idioms
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