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Cold Shoulder

Posted by R. Berg on October 29, 2002

In Reply to: Cold Shoulders posted by jim on October 29, 2002

: Where did the phrase, "Get the cold shoulder?" come from? Thank you...from Saxon

One hypothesis is that it originally referred to serving bad meat (a cold shoulder of mutton) to make guests leave, but there's more support for the idea that it came from coldly turning one's back on someone. See
www.word-detective.com/ 011502.html#coldshoulder
(link below).

  • Word Detective: cold shoulder

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