Idiom
cold fish
Meaning
A heartless individual; a person lacking empathy and emotion.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“He is a cold fish and never shows any emotion.”
“My neighbor is a cold fish who never says hello back to me.”
“I tried to be friendly, but my new boss is such a cold fish that he barely looked at me.”
“You might find it hard to work for her because she is a cold fish who never praises anyone for their hard work.”
“Even though the movie was incredibly sad, he sat there like a cold fish and did not react at all.”
“I broke up with him because he acted like a cold fish whenever I needed emotional support during a difficult week at my job.”
“Despite his reputation as a brilliant strategist, his colleagues often found him to be a cold fish who remained entirely indifferent to their personal struggles.”
Examples
simple
“He is a cold fish and never shows any emotion.”
“My neighbor is a cold fish who never says hello back to me.”
contextual
“I tried to be friendly, but my new boss is such a cold fish that he barely looked at me.”
“You might find it hard to work for her because she is a cold fish who never praises anyone for their hard work.”
“Even though the movie was incredibly sad, he sat there like a cold fish and did not react at all.”
“I broke up with him because he acted like a cold fish whenever I needed emotional support during a difficult week at my job.”
complex
“Despite his reputation as a brilliant strategist, his colleagues often found him to be a cold fish who remained entirely indifferent to their personal struggles.”
Origin
Coined by William Shakespeare in 1611, the term appears in his play *The Winter's Tale* as a description of a woman's temperament. The playwright’s use of the phrase established the specific comparison between a lack of human warmth and the temperature of a fish, though the social inconvenience of such a personality has since outlived the context of the scene.
Key words
Related idioms
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