cold spot

American

noun

Physiology.

a sensory area in the skin that responds to a decrease in temperature.

cold spot British

noun

an area where house prices are stable and properties are slow to sell

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of cold spot

First recorded in 1890–95

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

The UCU warned the East Midlands would become a "cold spot" for studying languages following an announcement by the University of Nottingham suspending programmes from 2026-27.

From BBC • Mar. 23, 2026

"People have been asking why this cold spot exists," said UCR climate scientist Wei Liu, who led the study with doctoral student Kai-Yuan Li.

From Science Daily • Dec. 7, 2025

My cold spot is my hands, and as soon as it drops into the 50s, I’m wearing gloves.

From Slate • Oct. 24, 2020

Intriguingly, that leaves open a pretty wild possibility—the cold spot might be the evidence of a collision with a parallel universe.

From Scientific American • Jun. 2, 2017

“The very essence of the tomb, as Theodora points out. The cold spot in Borley Rectory only dropped eleven degrees,” he went on complacently.

From "The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023