English · Idiom Candidate

pour cold water on

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Discourage.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

làm mất tinh thần

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Presently he felt bound to pour some cold water on all this optimism.

Kenneth Clarke, the education secretary, poured cold water on the recommendations of a working party set up by his department to look at physical education.

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. Figurative class: Euphemism (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Topics: Water

Common questions

What does “pour cold water on” mean?

Discourage.

Is “pour cold water on” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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