"Cold Shoulder" | Origin
Reviewed by Gavin Meiring, Lead research and primary author · Doctoral Candidate (Corporate Governance) · Research and drafting assisted by AI
- The phrase is first recorded in Sir Walter Scott's novel 'The Antiquary' (1816), where a character is given 'the cold shoulder'.
- The popular story — that unwanted guests were served a cold shoulder of mutton to signal they had outstayed their welcome — has no documentary evidence and is a folk etymology that arose after the phrase already existed.
- The more likely explanation is the physical gesture: turning a cold, unwelcoming shoulder (back) toward someone, the opposite of a warm reception — though the true origin remains uncertain.
Cold Shoulder
To "give someone the cold shoulder" means to deliberately ignore them, treat them with indifference, or snub them in a pointed and intentional way. This page explores the origin of the phrase and how it became one of the most recognisable expressions for social rejection in English.
How to Use This Page
- Read the meaning above to confirm you understand how the phrase is used.
- Explore the history section to discover where the phrase originates.
- Check the modern examples to see the phrase applied in different contexts.
The History
The most widely cited origin of "cold shoulder" points to Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish novelist, who used the phrase in his 1816 novel "The Antiquary." In that text, a character receives a metaphorical cold shoulder as a sign of social dismissal. Scott used it to describe the deliberate withdrawal of warmth and hospitality.
A popular but unverified folk etymology claims the phrase comes from a medieval practice: when a host wanted an unwelcome guest to leave, they would serve them a cold shoulder of mutton rather than a warm, freshly cooked meal. A warm meal signalled welcome; a cold one signalled that it was time to go. While this story is colourful, historians cannot confirm it was a widespread actual custom. It may simply have emerged as a plausible explanation after the fact.
What is clear is that the phrase drew on the natural symbolism of warmth and coldness to express emotional temperature. A warm greeting communicates welcome; a cold one communicates rejection or indifference. The shoulder element may relate to the act of literally turning one's shoulder away from someone, showing them your back rather than your face. By the mid-nineteenth century the phrase was established on both sides of the Atlantic.
How It Is Used Today
In casual conversation, someone might say "I tried to say hello to her at the party, but she gave me the complete cold shoulder. I have no idea what I did wrong." The phrase conveys pointed, deliberate social exclusion.
In a workplace context, the phrase describes professional snubbing: "Ever since the disagreement in the meeting, he's been giving his colleague the cold shoulder." It suggests the silent treatment rather than open conflict.
In journalism and entertainment, the phrase appears in discussions of feuds, falling-outs, and diplomatic tensions. A headline might read: "Tech giant gives cold shoulder to merger talks." This extends the phrase into formal or institutional contexts.
Similar Phrases
"The silent treatment" describes the same behaviour, withholding communication as a form of punishment or rejection. "Cut someone dead" is an older British phrase for completely ignoring someone in a social setting, pretending they do not exist. "Freeze someone out" suggests a prolonged, deliberate campaign of exclusion. All three share the core idea of using silence or indifference as a tool of social control or punishment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "give the cold shoulder" mean? It means to deliberately ignore someone or treat them with pointed indifference. It is a form of social snubbing in which the person being ignored is made to feel unwelcome or excluded.
Who first used the phrase "cold shoulder"? Sir Walter Scott is credited with the earliest known use in his 1816 novel "The Antiquary." He used it to describe the deliberate withdrawal of warmth and hospitality from a guest.
Is the cold shoulder the same as the silent treatment? They are closely related but slightly different. The cold shoulder typically involves being physically present but distant and unresponsive, while the silent treatment is a more deliberate and sustained refusal to communicate. Both are forms of social punishment through withdrawal.
Is the phrase used in British English? Yes, it is entirely standard in British English and equally common in American, Australian, and Irish usage. It is one of the more consistent idioms across varieties of English.
Also try these free tools related to Cold Shoulder: - Word Origins Hub
A small number of dated items, set out in order
The history above rests on a small number of dated items, and each one answers a slightly different question. Setting them out in order shows how thin the record is before Scott and how quickly the phrase spreads afterwards.
| Date | Witness | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| 22 July 1808 | The Chester Chronicle, in a comic article about the weather | The words cold and shoulder paired in print eight years before Scott, in a passage about a landlord and an uninvited visitor |
| 1816 | Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary: "The Countess's dislike did na gang farther at first than just shewing o' the cauld shouther" | The earliest citation of the phrase in the Oxford English Dictionary, in Scots dialect |
| 1816 | Scott's own glossary to The Antiquary: "Show the cauld shouther. Appear cold and reserved" | The author expected readers not to know the expression |
| December 1823 | Sir Walter Scott, St Ronan's Well, published in Edinburgh with a title-page date of 1824: "I must tip him the cold shoulder, or he will be pestering me eternally" | The phrase in English, with a different verb, seven years later and from the same hand |
| 1844 | The first reference to the phrase in an American work | The expression established on both sides of the Atlantic |
What the glossary entry tells us
The most informative item in that table is not a citation of the phrase at all. Scott added a definition to the glossary at the end of The Antiquary, explaining that to show the cold shoulder means to appear cold and reserved. An author glosses a word or a phrase when the expected reader will not know it, and a glossary entry in 1816 is evidence that the expression was not yet in general circulation.
That placement also nudges the origin question in a particular direction. If the phrase had been a common English or Scottish idiom, a glossary entry would have been unnecessary. The entry is consistent with an expression that Scott had recently heard and found useful, which is what the phrase historians who have looked into it conclude. Robert Allen, in the Dictionary of English Phrases of 2008, argues that Scott either invented the expression or drew it from local usage that had not reached print, and he notes that the two earliest citations in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary are both from Scott and that neither refers to food.
Reading the 1808 antedating without overreading it
The Chester Chronicle item of July 1808 is the one piece of evidence that complicates the picture, and it deserves care. The phrase researcher Pascal Tréguer located it in a humour piece about the hot weather, where the run of the joke lists people reacting to temperature: the rich miser looks coldly on a poor friend, and the inhospitable landlord treats his uninvited visitor to a cold shoulder. The sentence is a joke about warmth, and the visitor who receives the cold shoulder is a guest, which is the shape the mutton story predicts.
Tréguer reads the item as support for the food explanation, and it is worth separating what the quotation proves from what it suggests. It proves that the words cold and shoulder were being paired in print in a passage about an uninvited guest eight years before The Antiquary. It suggests that the food reading of the phrase was available to a provincial newspaper's readership in 1808. Neither of those things establishes the custom the folk etymology describes, because one comic sentence in a single newspaper is not a record of a practice, and the story requires a practice to have been widespread enough to generate a phrase. A reader can hold both facts at once: the 1808 item is a genuine earlier appearance of the image, and the custom behind the popular story remains undocumented.
The phrase in four settings
The meaning has been stable since the first citation, which is unusual for an expression of that age, and what changes between settings is the formality rather than the sense.
| Setting | Typical form | What it communicates |
|---|---|---|
| Conversation | She gave me the cold shoulder | A deliberate, personal snub |
| Workplace | The two of them have exchanged nothing but the cold shoulder since the meeting | Conflict conducted by silence rather than in the open |
| Institutional and journalistic | The company gave the proposal the cold shoulder | A decision to ignore something rather than to reject it |
| Entertainment coverage | The actor gave the presenter the cold shoulder on the red carpet | A witnessed snub between people with an audience |
The institutional use is the most interesting of the four. A company cannot physically turn away, so the phrase in a business headline means that a proposal was neither accepted nor refused. It describes the absence of an answer, which is why it appears so often in coverage of merger talks and takeover approaches, where a decision to do nothing is itself a decision.
The near neighbours, and where the boundary falls
Four expressions sit close to this one and are not interchangeable, which is the sign that each is doing separate work.
| Expression | What it names | How it differs |
|---|---|---|
| The cold shoulder | Deliberate indifference, shown while present | The person is available to be seen and chooses distance |
| The silent treatment | A refusal to communicate, sustained over time | Active withholding rather than withdrawal of warmth |
| Cut someone dead | Complete public non-recognition | Older, more British, and total rather than gradual |
| Freeze someone out | A campaign of exclusion by a group | Collective, prolonged, and aimed at removal rather than at rebuff |
The first two are the pair most often used as synonyms, and the distinction is about mechanism rather than severity. The cold shoulder is a stance: the person is in the room and declines to be warm. The silent treatment is a policy: words are withheld, which is a different act. A colleague who nods and moves on has given the cold shoulder. A colleague who does not answer for a fortnight is administering the silent treatment, and the two behaviours can appear in the same dispute without being the same behaviour.
The references behind these dates
The 1816 and 1823 citations are the two earliest in the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), which records them with volume and page, and the same entries show the phrase absent from literature before Scott, which is the basis for crediting him with its printed introduction. Robert Allen's Dictionary of English Phrases (2008) is the source of the argument that Scott invented the expression or drew it from unrecorded local usage. The 1808 Chester Chronicle item was located by the phrase researcher Pascal Tréguer, whose reading of it as evidence for the food explanation is noted above and kept separate from the dated-citation record. The point about the first American reference in 1844 comes from the same body of phrase research. Every date printed on this page can be checked against one of those three, which is the standard an origin claim has to meet.