Is cold a describing word

What are some descriptive words for Cold ?

Here is a list of words that describe Cold.

Total number of Cold words and adjectives: 46 words

Cold words are listed in alphabetical order.

acold,
anticipation,
arctic,
bitter frost,
chill,
chilliness,
chilly,
cold-blooded,
colder,
coldest,
colding,
coldish,
coldly,
coldness,
cold snap,
cold wave,
common cold,
cool,
coolness,
damp,
freeze,
freezing,
frigid,
frigoric,
frosty,
frozen,
gelid,
gelidity,
glacial,
ice,
ice-cold,
icicle,
iciness,
icy,
low temperature,
norther,
refrigerate,
shiver,
shudder,
snap,
starve,
temperature,
tremble,
unresponsive,
winterkill,
wintery.

Download Cold Words PDF: Descriptive Words for Cold PDF

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The idea for the Describing Words engine came when I was building the engine for Related Words (it’s like a thesaurus, but gives you a much broader set of related words, rather than just synonyms). While playing around with word vectors and the «HasProperty» API of conceptnet, I had a bit of fun trying to get the adjectives which commonly describe a word. Eventually I realised that there’s a much better way of doing this: parse books!

Project Gutenberg was the initial corpus, but the parser got greedier and greedier and I ended up feeding it somewhere around 100 gigabytes of text files — mostly fiction, including many contemporary works. The parser simply looks through each book and pulls out the various descriptions of nouns.

Hopefully it’s more than just a novelty and some people will actually find it useful for their writing and brainstorming, but one neat little thing to try is to compare two nouns which are similar, but different in some significant way — for example, gender is interesting: «woman» versus «man» and «boy» versus «girl». On an inital quick analysis it seems that authors of fiction are at least 4x more likely to describe women (as opposed to men) with beauty-related terms (regarding their weight, features and general attractiveness). In fact, «beautiful» is possibly the most widely used adjective for women in all of the world’s literature, which is quite in line with the general unidimensional representation of women in many other media forms. If anyone wants to do further research into this, let me know and I can give you a lot more data (for example, there are about 25000 different entries for «woman» — too many to show here).

The blueness of the results represents their relative frequency. You can hover over an item for a second and the frequency score should pop up. The «uniqueness» sorting is default, and thanks to my Complicated Algorithm™, it orders them by the adjectives’ uniqueness to that particular noun relative to other nouns (it’s actually pretty simple). As you’d expect, you can click the «Sort By Usage Frequency» button to adjectives by their usage frequency for that noun.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source mongodb which was used in this project.

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Are you enjoying the cold snap? With the thermometer diving towards zero across the UK, it’s time to think about winter weather vocabulary. There are many ways to describe a cold day – certainly useful when living in a northern climate! From cool to chilly to freezing, whether the wind is breezy, blustery or gale-force – with or without a downpour – cold weather vocabulary is always handy at this time of year. Read on to explore the English vocabulary you need to talk about the cold weather.

 

Cold weather vocabulary often mixes up adjectives and nouns, while there are many standard expressions that are used all the time.

Cold weather can sometimes be a nuisance if it interferes with plans, but sometimes it can feel cosy if you are tucked up inside the warm house! It can feel Christmassy too and a bit of snow always encourages a festive atmosphere.

Read on to explore English cold weather vocabulary so you can deal with any cold weather situation this winter.

 

Words to describe cold weather

Cool (adj) – mildly cold (cool air can often be pleasantly refreshing)

Chilly (adj) – quite cold

Crisp (adj) – quite cold

Fresh – quite cold

Brisk – cold

Freezing (adj) – very cold

Biting (adj) – extremely cold (e.g. there’s a biting wind)

Bitter (adj) – extremely cold (e.g. it’s bitterly cold)

Harsh – very cold and unpleasant

a cold snap – a period of cold weather

a cold spell – a period of cold weather

Bleak – cold and grey, depressing weather without colour or brightness

Snowy (adj) – when it is snowing

Sleet (noun) – a combination of snow and rain

Frost (noun) – small, sparkling ice crystals that form a thin layer on objects when the temperature is freezing

Icicle (noun) – a pointed column of ice that forms when dripping water freezes.

Vocabulary to describe wind and rain

Winter weather can also mean lots of rain and wind. Here are some useful weather words for rainy or windy days:

drizzle (noun) / drizzly (adj)  – very light rain

pouring (verb / adj) – raining very heavily

a downpour (noun) –  a short time of very heavy rain

a shower (noun) – a short time of light rain

spitting (verb) – just starting to rain

 

a breeze (noun ) / breezy (adj) – a light wind, which can be pleasantly refreshing

blowy (adj) – windy

blustery (adj) – very windy, often in short and sudden bursts of wind

high winds – very strong winds

North/South/West/East wind – this refers to the direction the wind is blowing from

slush (noun) – when snow starts to melt and turns muddy and ‘slushy’

thaw / melt (verb) – when the snow /ice starts to turn back to water and disappear into the ground

a blizzard (noun) – a snow storm

a storm (noun) / stormy (adj) – very rainy and windy, often with thunder and lightning

a gale (noun) / gale force winds – very strong winds

a hurricane (noun) – a severe storm that is usually destructive

 

Cold weather vocabulary in conversation

To ask about the weather you can say:

What’s the weather like?

What’s it like out there?

What’s it like outside?

Is it cold out?

Is it raining?

Is it still snowing?

Is it windy?

Did you get caught in the rain?

Should I take my brolly? (‘brolly’ is British slang for umbrella)

To talk about cold weather you can say:

‘It’s a bit cold out there’ / ‘It’s cold out’ (often said just after getting in, shutting the door and rubbing your hands together!)

‘It’s a bit chilly today, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a bit breezy’ / ‘It’s a bit blowy’ – windy

‘It’s a bit nippy’  – colloquial English, quite cold

‘It’s brisk’  – it is cold but also refreshing

‘It’s bitter outside’  – very cold

‘There’s a bite in the air’ / ‘There’s a nip in the air’ / ‘There’s a chill in the air’

‘It’s colder than it looks’  – often said when it is sunny outside, but still cold

‘We’re going through a cold snap’

‘There was a cold spell last week’

‘It’s raining cats and dogs!’ – very heavy rain

‘I was caught in the rain’ it started raining while you were out

‘I got soaked to the skin!’ – to get very wet from the rain

‘There is a blanket of snow on the ground’ – a layer of snow has settled on the ground

‘The snow is settling’ – the snow is staying on the ground without melting

Now you have learned some useful cold weather vocabulary, why not explore hot weather vocabulary for a contrasting weather lesson?

Share your thoughts on cold weather vocabulary

Have you used any of these cold weather phrases recently?

Do you find any cold weather words interesting or strange?

What slang expressions have you heard used to talk about the cold weather?

Is it freezing now where you are?

 

Attributions

1. Cold Winter Christmas Girl Cap Snow Red Street via Maxpixel.net [CC0 Public Domain]

It is common to make small talk about the weather. Expanding your vocabulary around the weather will make you more confident in making casual chit-chat with native English speakers. In the video below, Gabby discusses five words to use when the temperature drops outside. Here are five words to talk about the cold weather.

CHILLY

Sounds like a good we like to eat, but spelled differently. Some people like to eat spicy chili when it gets chilly outside, the heat from the dish warms them up! Chilly is a good word to describe the start of a change in seasons, or an unexpected drop in temperature.

“Boy it is chilly out there today!”

FRIGID

This is a good word to describe the weather when it is super cold. Be careful with this word, however, as it has multiple meanings. This word is sometimes used to describe a person who is cold, stiff and unresponsive (often meaning sexually) – as if they were frozen!

“We can expect frigid temperatures next week”

FROSTY

Just like the song “Frosty the Snowman”. Frost is the white icy coating (not snow) that covers the surface of window panes, grass, leaves, or the outside of your car when the temperature drops below freezing. Frosty is a word you might use on a day where you notice this white covering everywhere and you notice the sidewalks are a little slippery.

“Careful out there – it is quite frosty!”

NOTE: There is a double meaning to the word frosty. Often is someone is unfriendly, they may also be described as “frosty”. It means they are cold and unwelcoming.

FREEZING

The word freezing is probably the most commonly used word to describe Winter weather in English.

“I am freezing! Can we turn up the heat please?”

“I think we will need to warm up the car first before we head out, it is freezing out there!”

“Freezing temperatures” (32 degrees Fahrenheit, 0 degrees Celsius)

COLDER THAN A ___________!

You fill in the blank for this one. Be creative or funny. There are some pretty raunchy ones out there that are best looked up online on your own time.

“My word, it is colder than my nihilist ex-girlfriends heart out there”

“It is colder than a polar bear’s toenail out there”

“Boy – it is colder than a cast iron toilet on the shady side of an iceberg”

Watch the video now to see Gabby give you five words to talk about the cold weather!

For more videos: Go Natural English YT