catch cold

Idioms  

1. Also, catch one's death (of cold). Become infected with a cold virus, contract a bad cold, as in Jane manages to catch cold on every important business trip, or Put on your hat or you'll catch your death. The first term originally (16th century) meant becoming chilled by exposure to cold and took on its present meaning in the late 1600s. The hyperbolic variant, often shortened, is somewhat newer.

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Example Sentences

The same technique being used to catch cold case killers also is being used to identify unidentified cold case bodies.

From Fox News • Feb. 14, 2020

The world unravels, but then at the end of the film, the aliens conveniently catch cold and die, and Cruise’s nuclear family turns out to be still happily intact.

From The Guardian • Jun. 3, 2016

To those obvious considerations we can add that parents catch cold less often, which must offer a small earnings boost.

From New York Times • Nov. 14, 2012

He works in a cold, dreary atelier on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, warns visitors to "please keep your hat on, otherwise you will catch cold."

From Time Magazine Archive

Because the weather was so cold, she took an old quilt from her bed and threw it over him so he wouldn’t catch cold while he waited for her.

From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith