Advertisement
Advertisement
cold comfort
noun
- slight or negligible comfort; scarce consolation.
Word History and Origins
Origin of cold comfort1
Idioms and Phrases
Slight or no consolation. For example, He can't lend us his canoe but will tell us where to rent one—that's cold comfort . The adjective cold was being applied to comfort in this sense by the early 1300s, and Shakespeare used the idiom numerous times.Example Sentences
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons This novel won the literary Prix Femina Étranger.
Yet the fact that innovation is a wonderful, exciting thing is cold comfort to the man who feels he has become obsolete.
Yet this theoretical resolution is cold comfort to same-sex couples living in the many states that maintain marriage bans.
And if they lose this battle while aiming to win the larger war, it will be cold comfort on the morning of Nov. 7th.
Although phone calls provide cold comfort, the situation of detained journalists remains critical.
You will have heard by now the sad news of your husband's death, and it is but cold comfort to offer you my sincerest sympathy.
"Yes, but you have had it with a vengeance; and I doubt not that your apparent contentment is but cold comfort," continued Glenn.
Do be reasonable, and listen to reason, though God knows you can be in no mood for such cold comfort!
"I get a sort of cold comfort from the thought of that city," he said.
This was cold comfort to Carrie, who was painfully conscious of having been a particularly silly school-girl just then.
Advertisement
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Browse