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  • stone-cold
    stone-cold
    adjective
    completely cold
  • stone cold
    stone cold
    Unfeeling, insensible, as in That sad story left her stone cold. This analogy was already used by Shakespeare in Henry V (2:3): “Cold as any stone.”

stone-cold

British  

adjective

  1. completely cold

"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

adverb

  1. (intensifier)

    stone-cold sober

"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
stone cold Idioms  
  1. Unfeeling, insensible, as in That sad story left her stone cold. This analogy was already used by Shakespeare in Henry V (2:3): “Cold as any stone.”


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:

Why lean into Curry’s “nice guy” off-court image when the man is a stone-cold killer on the court?

From Slate Nov. 15, 2025

This latest war of words adds to the pair's tumultuous feud, with Trump in 2019 calling the mayor "a stone-cold loser" and Sir Sadiq accusing him of stirring up far-right politics.

From BBC Sep. 18, 2025

“The math is a stone-cold fact,” Anderson says.

From Los Angeles Times Sep. 18, 2025

One way to view the meteoric growth of women’s college basketball is through the career arc of its current protagonist: Caitlin Clark, the University of Iowa’s stone-cold mad bomber.

From New York Times Apr. 2, 2024

Harry lay facedown on the stone-cold floor, listening to Myrtle gurgling morosely in the end toilet.

From "Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets" by J. K. Rowling

Michael Jackson’s celebrity is so blinding, his music so compelling, that it cloaks him with an almost impenetrable shield from the truth: He was a stone cold pedophile.

From The Wall Street Journal May 2, 2026

There was an ambivalent, if not stone cold, attitude towards the beefy Californian.

From BBC Sep. 25, 2025

“To be 21 years old coming in and be stone cold at the plate - I’ve never seen someone come up here and not chase pitches around the zone.”

From Washington Times Oct. 8, 2023

There will never be another Mike Leach, a stone cold weirdo who didn’t want to change to be more like other football coaches, and who eventually forced those football coaches to be more like him.

From Seattle Times Dec. 13, 2022

There are staircases, also of wood, which creak when we climb them, and banisters we aren’t supposed to slide down, and iron radiators that make banging noises and are either stone cold or blazing hot.

From "Cat's Eye" by Margaret Atwood

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