• cool •
Pronunciation: kul • Hear it!Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: 1. Slightly cold, of a fairly low temperature. 2. Indifferent, unresponsive, as 'to be cool to an idea'. 3. Calm, collected, phlegmatic, imperturbable, e.g. 'to remain cool during a crisis'. 4. (Jazz) Opposite of 'hot' jazz: with a slow beat, soft, simple. 5. (Slang) Neat, up-to-date, modern, as 'a cool new outfit'.
Notes: Today's Good Word may be used as a noun, as in 'the cool of the evening', or a verb as in 'to cool down after a heated argument'. It may also be used as an interjection, e.g. Cool! "Neat! Great!" This word has a substantial family; a quality noun, coolness (in case you need another syllable), an adverb, coolly, and a diminutive adjective, coolish "slightly cool".
In Play: The basic sense of today's word reflects the temperature of things: "Hot jazz on a cool spring night was a winning combination." It can, however, refer to emotions and reactions that are the opposite of "hot" or "heated": "Ginny was cool to the idea of cleaning up her room." Finally, the slang sense of our Good Word is widely used in the English-speaking world, and has been picked up by several European languages: "Wow! Your new tat is really cool!"
Word History: Cool is a variant of cold that struck out on its own. Chill comes from the same place. All three are Germanic words (not borrowed from French or Latin) that go back to Proto-Indo-European gel- "cold, freeze". English did borrow several Latin variants of the PIE root, gelatin and jelly, from Latin gelare "to freeze". The history of cool in Modern English is itself cool. It started out referring to the temperature. In the 40s when hot picked up the meaning "fast" among jazz musicians, the alternative for slow jazz was, obviously, cool. Since cool jazz was more modern and more sophisticated, when the word escaped to the general vocabulary, it took on the meaning "modern, up-to-date".
