out cold
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
unconscious or deeply asleep
Literally: outside something cold
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
He stood outside the door and cried and then went and drank until he was out cold.
He was out cold, his body a dead weight on hers, his face buried in the tangled skeins of her long hair.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “out cold” mean?
unconscious or deeply asleep Literally: outside something cold
Is “out cold” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.