The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cold \Cold\ (k[=o]ld), a. [Compar. Colder (-[~e]r); superl. Coldest.] [OE. cold, cald, AS. cald, ceald; akin to OS. kald, D. koud, G. kalt, Icel. kaldr, Dan. kold, Sw. kall, Goth. kalds, L. gelu frost, gelare to freeze. Orig. p. p. of AS. calan to be cold, Icel. kala to freeze. Cf. Cool, a., Chill, n.]
Deprived of heat, or having a low temperature; not warm or hot; gelid; frigid. ``The snowy top of cold Olympis.''
--Milton.Lacking the sensation of warmth; suffering from the absence of heat; chilly; shivering; as, to be cold.
Not pungent or acrid. ``Cold plants.''
--Bacon-
Wanting in ardor, intensity, warmth, zeal, or passion; spiritless; unconcerned; reserved.
A cold and unconcerned spectator.
--T. Burnet.No cold relation is a zealous citizen.
--Burke. Unwelcome; disagreeable; unsatisfactory. ``Cold news for me.'' ``Cold comfort.''
--Shak.-
Wanting in power to excite; dull; uninteresting.
What a deal of cold business doth a man misspend the better part of life in!
--B. Jonson.The jest grows cold . . . when in comes on in a second scene.
--Addison. Affecting the sense of smell (as of hunting dogs) but feebly; having lost its odor; as, a cold scent.
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Not sensitive; not acute.
Smell this business with a sense as cold As is a dead man's nose.
--Shak. Distant; -- said, in the game of hunting for some object, of a seeker remote from the thing concealed.
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(Paint.) Having a bluish effect. Cf. Warm, 8.
Cold abscess. See under Abscess.
Cold blast See under Blast, n., 2.
Cold blood. See under Blood, n., 8.
Cold chill, an ague fit.
--Wright.Cold chisel, a chisel of peculiar strength and hardness, for cutting cold metal.
--Weale.Cold cream. See under Cream.
Cold slaw. See Cole slaw.
In cold blood, without excitement or passion; deliberately.
He was slain in cold blood after the fight was over.
--Sir W. Scott.To give one the cold shoulder, to treat one with neglect.
Syn: Gelid; bleak; frigid; chill; indifferent; unconcerned; passionless; reserved; unfeeling; stoical.
Wikipedia
Cold blast, in ironmaking, refers to a furnace where air is not preheated before being blown into the furnace. This represents the earliest stage in the development of ironmaking. Until the 1820s, the use of cold air was thought to be preferable to hot air for the production of high-quality iron; this effect was due to the reduced moisture in cool winter air.
The discovery by James Beaumont Neilson in about 1825 of the beneficial effects of the hot blast led to the rapid obsolescence of cold blast ironworks in Great Britain, where hot blast was in general use by 1835. Cold blast ironworks survived longer in the United States, but the use of hot blast as a method of smelting iron with anthracite was introduced in 1836, and the increasing US production of coke gradually drove out the cold blast furnaces. However, one of the last known operating cold blast charcoal furnaces, Pleasant (formerly Eagle) Furnace, in Curtin, Pennsylvania did not close until 1921.
Usage examples of "cold blast".
But even while he spoke so, to keep fear away until the very last, his eyes still strayed north, north into the eye of the wind, to where the sky far off was clear, as the cold blast, rising to a gale, drove back the darkness and the ruin of the clouds.
Throwing them wide open, he put his mouth to the orifice and let his laboring lungs gasp their eager fill of the cold blast roaring from the tanks.
He advanced, scarcely feeling the cold blast of the flames as Dyrstyggr's revenge warmed his blood.
The fuselage door was held open against the slipsteam, the two packages poised in the cold blast of the opening.
Virga asked, both interested in the man and fearful of returning into that cold blast.