cold-blooded

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cold-blood·ed

or cold·blood·ed (kōld′blŭd′ĭd)

adj.

a. Lacking feeling or emotion: a cold-blooded killer.

b. Executed without feeling or emotion: a cold-blooded crime; a cold-blooded performance of the concerto.

2. Ectothermic.

cold′-blood′ed·ly, cold′blood′ed·ly adv.

cold′-blood′ed·ness, cold′blood′ed·ness n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

cold-blooded

adj

1. having or showing a lack of feeling or pity: a cold-blooded killing.

2. informal particularly sensitive to cold

3. (Zoology) (of all animals except birds and mammals) having a body temperature that varies with that of the surroundings. Technical term: poikilothermic

ˌcold-ˈbloodedly adv

ˌcold-ˈbloodedness n

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

cold′-blood′ed

or cold′blood′ed,

adj.

1. of or designating animals, as fishes and reptiles, whose blood temperature ranges from the freezing point upward, in accordance with the temperature of the surrounding medium.

2. done or acting without emotion or feeling: a cold-blooded killer.

3. sensitive to cold.

[1585–95]

cold′-blood′ed•ly, adv.

cold′-blood′ed•ness, n.

cold-blood·ed

(kōld′blŭd′ĭd)

Having a body temperature that changes according to the temperature of the surroundings. Fish, amphibians, and reptiles are cold-blooded.

The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Adj.	1.	cold-blooded - without compunction or human feeling; "in cold blood"; "cold-blooded killing"; "insensate destruction" inhuman, insensate, cold inhumane - lacking and reflecting lack of pity or compassion; "humans are innately inhumane; this explains much of the misery and suffering in the world"; "biological weapons are considered too inhumane to be used"
	2.	cold-blooded - having cold blood (in animals whose body temperature is not internally regulated) zoological science, zoology - the branch of biology that studies animals warm-blooded - having warm blood (in animals whose body temperature is internally regulated)

cold-blooded

adjective callous, cruel, savage, brutal, ruthless, steely, heartless, inhuman, merciless, unmoved, dispassionate, barbarous, pitiless, unfeeling, unemotional, stony-hearted These callous, cold-blooded killers butchered six people.
feeling, open, kind, concerned, caring, warm, friendly, emotional, sensitive, passionate, charitable, humane, civilized, merciful, kind-hearted

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

cold-blooded

adjective

1. Completely lacking in compassion:

callous, cold-hearted, compassionless, hard, hard-boiled, hardened, hardhearted, heartless, obdurate, stonyhearted, unfeeling.

2. Not affected by or showing emotion:

cold, emotionless, unaffected, unemotional, unmoved.

Translations

cold-blooded

[ˈkəʊldˈblʌdɪd] ADJ (Zool) → de sangre fría (fig) → desalmado, despiadado

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

cold-blooded

[ˌkəʊldˈblʌdɪd] adj → a sangue freddo (fig) → spietato/a

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

cold

(kəuld) adjective

1. low in temperature. cold water; cold meat and salad.

2. lower in temperature than is comfortable. I feel cold.

3. unfriendly. His manner was cold.

noun

1. the state of being cold or of feeling the coldness of one's surroundings. She has gone to live in the South of France because she cannot bear the cold in Britain; He was blue with cold.

2. an illness with running nose, coughing etc. He has a bad cold; She has caught a cold; You might catch cold.

ˈcoldly adverb

in an unfriendly way. She looked at me coldly.

ˈcoldness noun

ˌcold-ˈblooded adjective

1. having blood (like that of a fish) which takes the same temperature as the surroundings of the body. cold-blooded creatures.

2. cruel and unfeeling. cold-blooded murder.

cold war

a major, especially political, struggle between nations which involves military threats but not fighting.

get cold feet

to lose courage. I was going to apply for the job but I got cold feet.

give (someone) the cold shoulder verb (also ˌcoldˈshoulder )

to show that one is unwilling to be friendly with (a person). All the neighbours gave her the cold shoulder; He cold-shouldered all his sister's friends.

in cold blood

deliberately and unemotionally. He killed them in cold blood.

References in classic literature ?

Chil is good friends with everybody, but he is a cold-blooded kind of creature at heart, because he knows that almost everybody in the Jungle comes to him in the long-run.]

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But what turns my head and makes my gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment that is manifest behind ninety-nine of every hundred trained-animal turns.

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True, other fish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but these, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very bellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the lee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn fire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood.

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``Malvoisin,'' said Bois-Guilbert, ``thou art a cold-blooded ''

``Friend,'' said the Preceptor, hastening to fill up the blank, in which Bois-Guilbert would probably have placed a worse word, ``a cold-blooded friend I am, and therefore more fit to give thee advice.

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Humphrey Van Weyden, "the cold-blooded fish," the "emotionless monster," the "analytical demon," of Charley Furuseth's christening, in love!

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Lady Arabella was cold-blooded, and she was prepared to go through all that might be necessary of indifference, and even insult, to become chatelaine of Castra Regis.

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Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags.

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"Even this girl is as cold-blooded as the rest of her sex!" That angry thought gave him back his self-control.

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It may be natural enough that, in her ignorance of the relationship, she should feel some degree of enmity against her, but no good or amiable woman would be capable of evincing that bitter, cold-blooded, designing malice towards a fancied rival that I have observed in her.'

View in context

'We condemn in the strongest terms this cold-blooded murder in broad daylight of our lawyer who was merely doing his job,' said lawyer Bernard Vitriolo, Globaltech head for legal, in a statement.

2 lawyers killed in Pangasinan, Rizal; IBP condemns slays

Maltese police have arrested two soldiers for the "cold-blooded" murder of an Ivorian migrant, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said on Saturday.