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cool

 - 8 dictionary results

cool

[kool] adjective, -er, -est, adverb, noun, verb
–adjective
1. moderately cold; neither warm nor cold: a rather cool evening.
2. feeling comfortably or moderately cold: I'm perfectly cool, but open the window if you feel hot.
3. imparting a sensation of moderate coldness or comfortable freedom from heat: a cool breeze.
4. permitting such a sensation: a cool dress.
5. not excited; calm; composed; under control: to remain cool in the face of disaster.
6. not hasty; deliberate: a cool and calculated action.
7. lacking in interest or enthusiasm: a cool reply to an invitation.
8. lacking in warmth or cordiality: a cool reception.
9. calmly audacious or impudent: a cool lie.
10. aloof or unresponsive; indifferent: He was cool to her passionate advances.
11. unaffected by emotions; disinterested; dispassionate: She made a cool appraisal of all the issues in the dispute.
12. Informal. (of a number or sum) without exaggeration or qualification: a cool million dollars.
13. (of colors) with green, blue, or violet predominating.
14. Slang.
a. great; fine; excellent: a real cool comic.
b. characterized by great facility; highly skilled or clever: cool maneuvers on the parallel bars.
c. socially adept: It's not cool to arrive at a party too early.
–adverb
15. Informal. coolly.
–noun
16. something that is cool; a cool part, place, time, etc.: in the cool of the evening.
17. coolness.
18. calmness; composure; poise: an executive noted for maintaining her cool under pressure.
–verb (used without object)
19. to become cool (sometimes fol. by down or off): The soup cooled in five minutes. We cooled off in the mountain stream.
20. to become less ardent, cordial, etc.; become moderate.
–verb (used with object)
21. to make cool; impart a sensation of coolness to.
22. to lessen the ardor or intensity of; allay; calm; moderate: Disappointment cooled his early zealousness.
23. cool down, to bring the body back to its normal physiological level after fast, vigorous exercise or activity by gradually slowing the pace of activity or by doing gentle exercises or stretches.
24. cool off, Informal. to become calmer or more reasonable: Wait until he cools off before you talk to him again.
25. cool out, Slang. to calm or settle down; relax: cooling out at the beach.
26. blow one's cool. blow 2 (def. 43).
27. cool it, Slang. calm down; take it easy.
28. cool one's heels. heel 1 (def. 26).

Origin:
bef. 1000; ME cole, OE cōl; c. MLG kōl, OHG kuoli (G kuhl). See cold, chill


cool⋅ing⋅ly, adverb
coolish, adjective
coolly, adverb
coolness, noun


1. See cold. 5. collected, self-possessed, unruffled, placid, quiet. See calm. 7, 8. distant, apathetic, reserved, remote, lukewarm. 22. temper, abate.


1, 3, 4, 7, 8. warm.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010.
Cite This Source Link To cool
cool   (kōōl)   
adj.   cool·er, cool·est
  1. Neither warm nor very cold; moderately cold: fresh, cool water; a cool autumn evening.

  2. Giving or suggesting relief from heat: a cool breeze; a cool blouse.

  3. Marked by calm self-control: a cool negotiator.

  4. Marked by indifference, disdain, or dislike; unfriendly or unresponsive: a cool greeting; was cool to the idea of higher taxes.

  5. Of, relating to, or characteristic of colors, such as blue and green, that produce the impression of coolness.

  6. Slang

    1. Excellent; first-rate: has a cool sports car; had a cool time at the party.

    2. Acceptable; satisfactory: It's cool if you don't want to talk about it.

  7. Slang Entire; full: worth a cool million.

adv.  Informal In a casual manner; nonchalantly: play it cool.
v.   cooled, cool·ing, cools

v.   tr.
  1. To make less warm.

  2. To make less ardent, intense, or zealous: problems that soon cooled my enthusiasm for the project.

  3. Physics To reduce the molecular or kinetic energy of (an object).

v.   intr.
  1. To become less warm: took a dip to cool off.

  2. To become calmer: needed time for tempers to cool.

n.  
  1. A cool place, part, or time: the cool of early morning.

  2. The state or quality of being cool.

  3. Composure; poise: "Our release marked a victory. The nation had kept its cool" (Moorhead Kennedy).


[Middle English cole, from Old English cōl; see gel- in Indo-European roots.]
cool'ish adj., cool'ly adv., cool'ness n.
Synonyms: These adjectives indicate absence of excitement or discomposure in a person, especially in times of stress. Cool usually implies merely a high degree of self-control, but it may also indicate aloofness: "Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience" (B.H. Liddell Hart). "An honest hater is often a better fellow than a cool friend" (John Stuart Blackie).
Composed implies serenity arising from self-discipline: The dancer was composed as she prepared for her recital.
Collected suggests self-possession: The witness remained collected throughout the questioning.
Unruffled emphasizes calm despite circumstances that might elicit agitation: "with contented mind and unruffled spirit" (Anthony Trollope).
Nonchalant describes a casual manner that may suggest, sometimes misleadingly, a lack of interest or concern: He reacted to the news in a nonchalant manner.
Imperturbable stresses unshakable calmness usually considered as an inherent trait: "A man ... /Cool, and quite English, imperturbable" (Byron).
Detached implies aloofness resulting either from lack of active concern or from resistance to emotional involvement: He sat through the service with a detached air. See Also Synonyms at cold.
Our Living Language  : The usage of cool as a general positive epithet or interjection has been part and parcel of English slang since World War II, and has even been borrowed into other languages, such as French and German. Originally this sense is a development from a Black English usage meaning "excellent, superlative," first recorded in written English in the early 1930s. Jazz musicians who used the term are responsible for its popularization during the 1940s. As a slang word expressing generally positive sentiment, it has stayed current (and cool) far longer than most such words. One of the main characteristics of slang is the continual renewal of its vocabulary and storehouse of expressions: in order for slang to stay slangy, it has to have a feeling of novelty. Slang expressions meaning the same thing as cool, like bully, capital, hot, groovy, hep, crazy, nervous, far-out, rad, and tubular have for the most part not had the staying power or continued universal appeal of cool. In general there is no intrinsic reason why one word stays alive and others get consigned to the scrapheap of linguistic history; slang terms are like fashion designs, constantly changing and never "in" for long. The jury is still out on how long newer expressions of approval such as def and phat will survive.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Slang Dictionary
cool

  1. mod.
    unabashed; unruffled; relaxed. (See also keep (one's) cool; losecool.) : She is totally cool and easygoing.
  2. mod.
    good; excellent. : This is a really cool setup!
  3. mod.
    [of music] mellow; smooth. : This stuff is so cool, I'm just floating.
  4. mod.
    no less than [some amount of money]. : She cleared a cool forty thousand on the Wilson deal.
  5. in.
    to die; to become cold after death. (Medical euphemism.) : We were afraid that he would cool.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Word Origin & History

cool 
O.E. col, from P.Gmc. *koluz, from PIE base *gel- "cold, to freeze." The v. form kele (from O.E. colian) was used by Shakespeare, but has been assimilated with the adj. into the modern word. Applied since 1728 to large sums of money to give emphasis to amount. Meaning "calmly audacious" is from 1825. Slang use for "fashionable" is 1933, originally Black English, said to have been popularized in jazz circles by tenor saxophonist Lester Young. Coolant in the radiator sense is from 1930. Coolth, on model of warmth, is occasionally attested since 1547, and was used by Pound, Tolkien, Kipling, etc.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Legal Dictionary

Main Entry: cool
Function: intransitive verb
: to lose passion : become calm —sometimes used with off or down cooled —W. Railroad LaFave and A. W. Scott, Junior>
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
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Computing Dictionary

COOL
1. Concurrent Object-Oriented Language.
2. CLIPS Object-Oriented Language?
3. A C++ class library developed at Texas Instruments that defines containers like Vectors, List, Hash_Table, etc. It uses a shallow hierarchy with no common base class. The functionality is close to Common Lisp data structures (like libg++). The template syntax is very close to Cfront 3.x and g++ 2.x.
JCOOL's main difference from COOL and GECOOL is that it uses real C++ templates instead of a similar syntax that is preprocessed by a special 'cpp' distributed with COOL and GECOOL.
(ftp://csc.ti.com/pub/COOL.tar.Z).
GECOOL, JCOOL: (ftp://cs.utexas.edu/pub/COOL/).
E-mail: Van-Duc Nguyen
(1992-08-05)

CooL language
Combined object-oriented Language.
An object-oriented language from the ITHACA Esprit project, which combines C-based languages with database technology.
(1995-03-15)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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Idioms & Phrases

cool

In addition to the idioms beginning with cool, also see keep cool; keep one's cool; play it cool.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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