cold fish
"cold-fish" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“cold fish” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 9
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A heartless individual; a person lacking empathy and emotion.
Corpus desk
Index EN-cold-fish · cold fish · English
cold fish · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 9 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "C" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | cold fish |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 9 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “cold fish” in English
Rare enough to double-check
cold fish is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for cold fish, typically a sign the spelling maps closely to how the word sounds. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Etymologically, the entry records: Coined by William Shakespeare in 1611, see quotations. The correct English form is cold fish, spelled C-O-L-D- -F-I-S-H.
Definition
- 1A heartless individual; a person lacking empathy and emotion.
- 2A sexual partner who, during sex, lacks vigor or emotional reciprocity.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how cold fish appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[…]it was thought ſhe was a Woman, and was turn'd into a cold fiſh, for ſhe wold not exchange fleſh with one that lou'd her: […]
He wouldn't have thought her such a cold fish. Pity. Still, there was plenty of time. Perhaps when she got used to his company she would thaw a little.
Etymology
Coined by William Shakespeare in 1611, see quotations.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.