cool
Americanadjective
-
cooler,
comparative
-
coolest
superlative
-
moderately cold; neither warm nor cold.
a rather cool evening.
- Antonyms:
- warm
-
feeling comfortably or moderately cold.
I'm perfectly cool, but open the window if you feel hot.
-
imparting a sensation of moderate coldness or comfortable freedom from heat.
a cool breeze.
- Antonyms:
- warm
-
permitting such a sensation.
a cool dress.
- Antonyms:
- warm
-
not excited; calm; composed; under control.
to remain cool in the face of disaster.
- Synonyms:
- quiet, placid, unruffled, self-possessed, collected
-
not hasty; deliberate.
a cool and calculated action.
-
lacking in interest or enthusiasm.
a cool reply to an invitation.
- Antonyms:
- warm
-
lacking in warmth or cordiality.
a cool reception.
- Antonyms:
- warm
-
calmly audacious or impudent.
a cool lie.
-
aloof or unresponsive; indifferent.
He was cool to her passionate advances.
-
unaffected by emotions; disinterested; dispassionate.
She made a cool appraisal of all the issues in the dispute.
-
Informal. (of a number or sum) without exaggeration or qualification.
a cool million dollars.
-
(of colors) with green, blue, or violet predominating.
-
Slang.
-
great; fine; excellent.
a real cool comic.
-
characterized by great facility; highly skilled or clever.
cool maneuvers on the parallel bars.
-
socially adept.
It's not cool to arrive at a party too early.
-
acceptable; satisfactory; okay.
If you want to stay late, that's cool.
-
adverb
interjection
noun
-
something that is cool; a cool part, place, time, etc..
in the cool of the evening.
-
coolness.
-
calmness; composure; poise.
an executive noted for maintaining her cool under pressure.
verb (used without object)
-
cools,
present (3rd person singular)
-
cooled,
past participle, past
-
cooling
present participle
-
to become cool (sometimes followed by down oroff ).
The soup cooled in five minutes. We cooled off in the mountain stream.
-
to become less ardent, cordial, etc.; become moderate.
verb (used with object)
-
cools,
present (3rd person singular)
-
cooled,
past participle, past
-
cooling
present participle
verb phrase
-
cool off to become calmer or more reasonable.
Wait until he cools off before you talk to him again.
-
cool down. see cooldown.
-
cool out to calm or settle down; relax.
cooling out at the beach.
adjective
-
moderately cold
a cool day
-
comfortably free of heat
a cool room
-
producing a pleasant feeling of coldness
a cool shirt
-
able to conceal emotion; calm
a cool head
-
lacking in enthusiasm, affection, cordiality, etc
a cool welcome
-
calmly audacious or impudent
-
informal (esp of numbers, sums of money, etc) without exaggeration; actual
a cool ten thousand
-
(of a colour) having violet, blue, or green predominating; cold
-
(of jazz) characteristic of the late 1940s and early 1950s, economical and rhythmically relaxed
-
informal sophisticated or elegant, esp in an unruffled way
-
informal excellent; marvellous
adverb
noun
-
coolness
the cool of the evening
-
slang calmness; composure (esp in the phrases keep or lose one's cool )
-
slang unruffled elegance or sophistication
verb
-
to make or become cooler
-
to lessen the intensity of (anger or excitement) or (of anger or excitement) to become less intense; calm down
-
slang (usually imperative) to calm down; take it easy
-
to wait or be kept waiting
Synonym Usage
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
-
coolingnessnoun
-
coolnessnoun
-
overcoolnessnoun
-
recoolverb
-
subcoolverb (used with object)
-
coolishadjective
-
overcooladjective
-
ultracooladjective
-
uncooledadjective
-
well-cooledadjective
-
coolinglyadverb
-
coollyadverb
-
overcoollyadverb
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
coolsimple
-
coolssimple
-
have cooledperfect
-
has cooledperfect
-
am coolingprogressive
-
are coolingprogressive
-
is coolingprogressive
-
have been coolingperfect progressive
-
has been coolingperfect progressive
Past
-
cooledsimple
-
had cooledperfect
-
was coolingprogressive
-
were coolingprogressive
-
had been coolingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of cool
First recorded before 1000; Middle English col, coul, Old English cลl; cognate with Middle Low German kลl, Old High German kuoli, German kรผhl; see cold, chill
Explanation
When the weather is cool, it's not quite cold but not warm either. When people are cool, they're mellow and in control. Cool has many meanings. When the weather goes from 70 degrees to 50, it cooled off. A winning pool player who starts losing also cools off. Drinking lemonade on a hot day is yet another way to cool off. When you lose your temper, you lose your cool. Hot cookies should cool before you eat them. Something fashionable is cool, but if you're cool to an idea, you're not so sure about it. Any situation that becomes less intense has cooled.
Vocabulary lists containing cool
Words for Cheese Writers
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Visual Arts - Introductory
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Visual Arts - High School
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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.
See Examples For:
Fed officials have forecast that their favorite measure of inflation, the core level of the PCE index, will cool to a 2.5% annual rate in 2027, Lewis noted.
From MarketWatch โ Oct. 12, 2026
Critics say they will add demand to electricity grids still heavily reliant on planet-warming fossil fuels, and place new pressure on often-stretched local water supplies to cool down hot servers.
From Barron's โ Oct. 11, 2026
The American League has thrown up an even more extreme case in the Tampa Bay Rays, who have the 27th payroll in the majors and are making small ball cool again.
From The Wall Street Journal โ Oct. 10, 2026
As much as we’d love to play it cool and laugh off the notion that anything matters, well, they sometimes do!
From Slate โ Oct. 10, 2026
I send a few laughing faces in reply, so she knows I’m cool with her teasing me.
From "Code Name Kingfisher" by Liz Kessler
U.S. natural gas futures settled higher for a fourth straight session as cooler weather forecasts favored early-season heating demand, which could limit storage builds for the remainder of the injection season.
From The Wall Street Journal โ Oct. 8, 2026
Prof Norman Ratcliffe, who led the research, explained that the chinstraps' "specialist diet" and preference for cooler waters appears to have left them vulnerable.
From BBC โ Oct. 7, 2026
This relatively cooler planet helps us better characterize and nail down this transition.
From Science Daily โ Oct. 7, 2026
That allows hotter and higher seas to slosh from the far western equatorial Pacific — like Indonesia — east to a normally cooler part of the ocean near Peru, Amaya said.
From Los Angeles Times โ Oct. 7, 2026
The air and the ground were much cooler around here.
From "Healer of the Water Monster" by Brian Young
One of the reasons that he wanted to become a writer was that he just thought Rod Serling was the coolest guy on the planet.
From Salon โ Oct. 10, 2026
Driving "was the coolest stuff I got to do," she said.
From Barron's โ Oct. 8, 2026
“The dark silver lining,” Gonzalez, the heat-weary fan said in a nod to global warming, “is this might be the coolest October of the rest of our lives.”
From Los Angeles Times โ Oct. 4, 2026
“I hadn’t even stepped inside, but I could feel it—this place was different, and genuinely one of the coolest houses I had ever seen,” he writes.
From MarketWatch โ Sep. 9, 2026
"I wasn't joking. New York is the coolest."
From "The Sky at Our Feet" by Nadia Hashimi
A premature New England panic cools with a Patriots victory in Buffalo.
From The Wall Street Journal โ Oct. 8, 2026
There will be little relief at night, when the region usually cools down.
From Los Angeles Times โ Sep. 7, 2026
As it rises, it expands and cools, allowing the moisture it carries to condense, forming large clouds.
From BBC โ Sep. 5, 2026
Lava flowing from a volcano eventually cools and hardens into rock, while water in a lake can freeze into ice during a cold winter.
From Science Daily โ Aug. 22, 2026
My Vigor cools to speak of him, so girt is he in Solemnity — Helm and Hauberk — with only the Eyes peering out through the gloomy Visor.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party" by M.T. Anderson
The system uses a cooling tank and pump, usually situated in the car's nose, that delivers a cooled liquid, such as glycol, through a system of pipes in a fireproof top worn under their overalls.
From BBC โ Oct. 8, 2026
That second observation provided another important confirmation that Roman was pointing where scientists expected and that the coronagraph could detect multiple stars once its detectors were cooled for greater sensitivity.
From Science Daily โ Oct. 2, 2026
When certain materials are cooled below a specific transition temperature, their electrical resistance disappears.
From Science Daily โ Oct. 2, 2026
Canada’s economy is expected to have cooled in the third quarter after a strong rebound the quarter before.
From The Wall Street Journal โ Oct. 1, 2026
Whoever finished first went out to relieve the man at the tiller so that he could eat his hoosh before it cooled.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
The UAE is a big hub for data-center investment, but projects there have their own challenges, including reliable power, cooling, water availability, connectivity, building permits and the economics of the data center in question.
From MarketWatch โ Oct. 12, 2026
Soccer tied to this summer’s World Cup that tucked cooling gel into a clear, stadium-friendly bag.
From The Wall Street Journal โ Oct. 12, 2026
Google said it will use "advanced" air cooling technology instead at the India hub, while the state plans six 1.2-gigawatt nuclear power plants as energy demand soars.
From Barron's โ Oct. 11, 2026
Ordinarily, cooling a metal causes its electrical resistance to fall steadily, allowing current to flow more easily.
From Science Daily โ Oct. 10, 2026
Until then, cooling systems need to run or the water in the reactor will quickly boil off, leaving the fuel exposed.
From "Meltdown" by Deirdre Langeland
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, ยฉ Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritageยฎ Idioms Dictionary copyright ยฉ 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
