Frank J. Wilstach, comp. A Dictionary of Similes. 1916.
Cold
Cold as loveless duty done.
—Mary Louisa Anderson
Cold as a dog’s nose.
—Anonymous
Cold as a frog.
—Anonymous
Cold as a hot-water bag in the morning.
—Anonymous
Cold as an enthusiastic New England audience.
—Anonymous
Cold as a ramrod.
—Anonymous
Cold as a tomb.
—Anonymous
Cold as Greenland’s icy mountains.
—Anonymous
Cold as charity.
—Anonymous
Cold as iron.
—Anonymous
Cold as the heart of a courtesan.
—Anonymous
Cold as the grave.
—Matthew Arnold
Icy cold as a crypt.
—Honoré de Balzac
Tears as cold as the stones on which sorrowing hearts had caused to be carved their regrets.
—Honoré de Balzac
Cold as the north side of a January gravestone by moonlight.
—J. R. Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms
As cold as cucumbers.
—Beaumont and Fletcher
Cold … As a young nun the day she is envested.
—Aphra Behn
Cold like a corpse.
—Charlotte Brontë
Cold … as graveyard stones from which the lichen’s scraped.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Cold as the rocks of Torneo’s hoary brow.
—Thomas Campbell
As colde as eny froste.
—Geoffrey Chaucer
Colde as ston.
—Thomas Campbell
Cold as the ice on northern sea.
—Ella D. Clymer
Cold as clay.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Cold as a turtle.
—Richard Cumberland
Cauld as the drifting snow.
—Allan Cunningham
Cauld as the marble stone.
—Allan Cunningham
Cold as the clod.
—Aubrey De Vere
Cold as one who waits for burial mould.
—Julia C. R. Dorr
Cold as a leaf long pillowed on a stone.
—Arthur D. Fiske
Cold as the coiling water-snake.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes
Cold, just like a summer grate.
—Thomas Hood
Cold as salt.
—James Huneker
Cold as the mountain stream.
—Mrs. Richmond Inglis
Cold as a bubbling well.
—John Keats
Cold as a skeleton.
—Amy Leslie
Cold as the breath of winds that blow
To silver shot descending snow.
—Richard Lovelace
As cold as an earthworm.
—Maurice Maeterlinck
Cold as the night-dews on the world.
—Gerald Massey
Cold as a fireless hearth.
—Gerald Massey
Cold as a fish.
—George Meredith
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent.
—George Meredith
Cold as Death’s chill hand.
—William J. Mickle
Cold as the snows of Rhodope.
—Hannah More
Cold as a dead maid’s cheek.
—Dinah Maria Mulock
Cold as the Cloyster’d Nun.
—The Muses Recreation, 1656
Cold as marble.
—Petrarch
Cold as Diana’s Crescent.
—Jane Porter
Cold as the world’s heart.
—Charles Reade
Cold as when death’s foot shall pass.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Cold as a dead man’s nose.
—William Shakespeare
Cold as a snowball.
—William Shakespeare
My belly is as cold as if I had swallowed snowballs for pills to cool the veins.
—William Shakespeare
Cold as dew to drooping leaves.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Cold, like a frozen chaos.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Cold as blight of dew.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold as … dawn.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold as the cast-off garb that is cold as clay.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Grew cold as a winter wave
In the wind from a wide-mouthed grave,
As a gulf wide open to swallow
The light that the world held dear.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold as fears.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold as rains in autumn.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne
Cold as winter’s sky.
—John Aaddington Symonds
Cold as the moon.
—John B. Tabb
As the night-mists … cold.
—Bayard Taylor
Cold, like a star.
—William Watson
Cold as the rank and wasting weeds, which lie in the pool’s dark bed.
—John Greenleaf Whittier