English

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Etymology

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From Middle English overcold, equivalent to over- +‎ cold.

Adjective

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overcold (comparative more overcold, superlative most overcold)

  1. Excessively cold.
    • 1676, Richard Wiseman, Severall Chirurgicall Treatises, London: [] E. Flesher and J. Macock, for R[ichard] Royston [], and B[enjamin] Took, [], →OCLC:
      application of over-cold Medicaments
    • 1867, John C. Gunn, Gunn's New Family Physician[1], Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, page 713:
      The Medical Journal, alluding to the subject, expresses the opinion that nearly one-half of all cases of Consumption are produced by unnecessary exposure, by breathing the impure air of badly or imperfectly ventilated and crowded public buildings, or by sleeping in overheated or overcold apartments, also badly ventilated. This is no doubt true. It should also have added two more causes in this country — wearing tight corsets and thin shoes.
    • 1883, The Independent 1883-08-30: Volume 35, Issue 1813[2], Open Court Publishing Company, page 7:
      In the human mind both attraction and repulsion play; and here also, as in outward nature, the attraction is the stronger force. We are, however, not to forget that we here use the words in a figurative sense. We are availing ourselves of that correspondence between the world without and the world within, which is one of the strongest evidences that all things arose from a Divine Mind, in whose likeness we are created. By that correspondence alone is language possible, to be a means of intercommunication of man with man, and an important instrument for developing as well as for expressing thought. In this figurative sense of the words “drawing” and “driving,” we say that the child is drawn toward what is bright in color, sweet in taste, harmonious in sound, comfortable and pleasant to the sense of touch, and driven from the dull and dirty, the bitter and nauseous, the ill-odored, the harsh and discordant, the rough and prickly, the overhot or overcold.
    • 1925, The Saturday Evening Post[3], G. Graham, page 6:
      “No,” he said, as Maida came into the overwarm living room which had just received Harter from the overcold early winter night, ‘I didn’t make good out there. But that was because I hit the place too late. All the making good was done by the first comers. That’s the way everywhere. Now I’ve been kind of looking over the field—in my mind, you know—on the drive back from Oklahoma. And there’s only just one corner of the United States left where the money is still flowing as fast as ever it did. California and the Klondike and the oil country and the rest of them have been exploited till the newcomer hasn’t a ghost of a show. But Florida is left. Why, I was talking to a chap here in Beemis who was just back from there. He told me ——”