the.com/cold blood
Not a temperature but a verdict: the calm that makes cruelty so chilling.
means Acting with deliberate, unfeeling calm — especially in violence — rather than in the heat of anger or passion.
from Born from old medical theory: physicians once believed the blood ran hot when stirred by rage or passion, so to act 'in cold blood' meant to act when the blood had cooled — coolly, deliberately, without the excuse of a fevered moment. The phrase, in English since at least the 17th century, mirrors the older 'in hot blood,' and both lean on the long-held humoral idea that temperament literally lived in the temperature of one's blood. Reptiles only later lent the word 'cold-blooded' its second, chillier life.
- biology myth
- No animal's blood actually runs cold; ectotherms match surroundings
- legal weight
- Premeditation, not rage, earns harsher murder charges
- reptile truth
- Lizards bask precisely to keep blood warm enough
- truman capote
- His nonfiction novel made the phrase literary
- poker face
- Coldblooded means unbothered, calculating, terrifyingly composed
in cold blood — truman capote's 1966 true crime novel about the 1959 clutter family murders in kansas
cold blooded animals — reptiles and amphibians like snakes, lizards, and frogs that regulate body temperature through environment