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By Liz Walter

In my last post I wrote about hot and warm temperatures. Today’s post looks at vocabulary for things that are colder, again with an emphasis on what each word or phrase can describe.

Something that is cool is quite cold. This is almost always a positive description, especially when it contrasts with something that is too hot:

There was a lovely cool breeze coming from the sea.

If we say that there is a chill – or more informally a nip – in the air, we mean that the weather is rather cold. A person who is very cold might describe themselves as being chilled to the bone. Chilly describes cold places, people or parts of the body, while nippy is used for the weather or the air but not usually people or parts of the body. Neither adjective is very emphatic:

There’s a real chill in the air this morning.

After two hours waiting at the bus stop, I was chilled to the bone.

I was feeling rather chilly.

It’s a bit nippy outside today.

There are several words or phrases for talking about very cold temperatures. A general and very common one is freezing or freezing cold. This can be used for objects, weather and people:

My feet are absolutely freezing!

It was a freezing cold day.

Something that is icy is either covered in ice or extremely cold. This adjective can be used for most things, as can the expressions ice-cold and as cold as ice, which both emphasize extreme coldness. Stone-cold tends to be used rather negatively for something that was once hot or which should be hot:

We shivered in the icy wind.

I’d love an ice-cold drink.

Her hands were as cold as ice.

By then, the soup was stone-cold.

We can say that a place or the weather is bitter or bitterly cold.  These words are negative and imply that the cold is painful:

We tried to shelter from the bitter wind.

It was bitterly cold on the mountain.

In extremely cold climates, we may talk about sub-zero temperatures. Glacial and arctic are also emphatic adjectives for extremely low temperatures:

Parts of the country experienced sub-zero temperatures last night.

Glacial temperatures added to their problems.

The temperature in his room was positively arctic.

Liquids that are  only slightly warm may be described as lukewarm or tepid. Both these words usually express disapproval and imply that the thing being described should be hotter:

The food was lukewarm.

The water in the bath was tepid.

I hope these temperature words are useful. Let me know in the comments if you can think of any more!

Listen to the author reading this blog post.

By Liz Walter

There are a lot of words for talking about temperature in English. Many of them describe particular types of thing. For example, some adjectives can be used to describe the weather but not food or people. This post is the first of a pair, and looks at some common words for things that are hot or warm.

I’ll start with red-hot, which is an emphatic word for something that is extremely hot. We use this adjective for objects, often metal objects, and not usually for weather or food:

Don’t touch that saucepan – it’s red-hot!

We talk about blistering or scorching (hot) weather, but we don’t usually use these words to talk about how people feel when they experience it:

They worked all afternoon in the blistering heat.

It was a scorching hot day.

There are however several words that can refer to both hot weather and the way we feel in it. These include baking (hot), boiling (hot), roasting (hot) and sweltering:

Everyone on the train was baking, but we couldn’t turn the heaters off.

It’s boiling hot here in the summer.

There was no shade on the beach and we were roasting.

We were forced to walk miles in the sweltering heat.

Scalding is an emphatic word used for liquids and implies that they will hurt you if you touch them. On the other hand, piping (hot) usually describes food or drink and is a rather positive description:

She accidentally put her hand in the scalding water.

Make sure the food is piping hot before you eat it.

If someone is too hot because they are ill, we say they have a temperature/are running a temperature, and if they are very hot because of a fever, we might say that they are burning (up):

Tom was running a temperature and feeling very ill.

She was burning up in the night.

If something is warm, it is fairly hot but not very hot. This word usually describes a pleasant temperature. Two more positive words are toasty, which usually describes a person’s body or sometimes a place that is comfortably warm, and balmy, which describes warm weather:

Make sure you stay warm if you’re going out in the snow.

My thick coat kept me toasty.

It was a balmy afternoon and we sat outside.

If you have found these words useful, look out for my next post, which will look at some of the words that describe things that are cold, or only slightly warm.