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in the cold light of day
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English
Etymology
Probably an allusion to a situation being seen more clearly in daylight, and after some time has passed. The word cold is used in the sense of “dispassionate; not prejudiced or partisan; impartial”.[1]
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ɪn‿ðə ˈkəʊld laɪt‿əv ˈdeɪ/
- (General American) IPA(key): /ɪn‿ðə ˈkoʊld laɪt‿əv ˈdeɪ/
- Rhymes: -eɪ
Audio (US): (file)
Prepositional phrase
- Viewed calmly and dispassionately after allowing emotions to cool or after having sobered up.
- Antonym: in the heat of the moment
- In the cold light of day, I felt I had overreacted.
- 1912 March, Burton E[gbert] Stevenson, “Preparations”, in The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet: A Detective Story, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, published 1918, →OCLC, page 119:
- In my over-wrought state of the night before, it had seemed reasonable enough; but here, in the cold light of day, it seemed preposterous.
- 2016, Susan Greenfield, “Dreaming”, in A Day in the Life of the Brain: The Neuroscience of Consciousness from Dawn till Dusk, London: Penguin Books, published 2017, →ISBN:
- To the dreamer, a dream can seem at the time eerily indistinguishable from everyday consciousness yet, in retrospect, upon waking, so self-evidently different. The fragmented narrative, the improbability of much of what happens – flying, for example, or the transmogrification of one individual suddenly into another, and so on – seem ludicrous, even embarrassing, in the cold light of day.
- 2018 August 16, Marshmello, Steve Mac, Dan Smith (lyrics and music), “Happier”, performed by Marshmello and Bastille:
- In the cold light of day, we're a flame in the wind / Not the fire that we've begun.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see in, the, cold, light, of, day: during the day; in daylight.
- 1853, Anna Mary Howitt, “The Casting of the Sieges-Thor, Bavaria”, in An Art-student in Munich. […], volume II, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 178:
- And above the crowd of living figures rise colossal forms of armed warriors, and peaceful poets, and sceptred monarchs; these glowing crimson; those standing calm and pale in the cold light of day.
- 1989, Rüdiger Safranski, “Weimar”, in Ewald Osers, transl., Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, published 1991, →ISBN, book 1, page 72:
- However subtle the social pecking order may have been, the outsider entering the famous town with high expectations saw it in the cold light of day shrink into a philistine backwoods dump.
Translations
viewed calmly and dispassionately after allowing emotions to cool
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See also
References
- ^ “in the cold light of day”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, →ISBN.
Further reading
- “in the cold light of day”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
- “in the cold light of day” (US) / “in the cold light of day” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
- “in the cold light of day”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “in the cold light of day” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.