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🥶 A chilled room ⏸️ Inactive state 💾 Offline backup
cold storage

cold storage

1 4.9
A state in which a plan or project is left unused for later
  • noun
  • /koʊld ˈstɔːrɪdʒ/
  • Informal
translation icon : congelación
  • After the last season ended, the players' jerseys were placed in cold storage for the offseason.

Examples

  • They would not make it through cold storage long enough to last up until the the following spring when they would be planted.

  • The team decided to keep the unused equipment in cold storage until it was needed for future projects.

  • The lawyers put them in cold storage.

    I Capture the Castle (2003)

  • The company's plans for expansion are in cold storage due to the current economic climate.

Synonyms

storage
vscold storage
339 1.0

A place where people keep things until they need them

focuses on being kept unused or postponed rather than the physical place
deep freeze
vscold storage
2 6.0

A time when work or activity stops for a long time

is a similar inactive state but is often shorter or clearly temporary

How Inactive

abandoned
2 2.8
to mothball
7 7.2
shelving
1 6.0
cold storage
  • Informal
1 4.9
on hold
169 2.5
in use
49 1.0

Surface Forms

cold storage singular
cold storages plural

Morphology

cold + storage

While 'cold storage' could be literally understood as refrigerated storage from 'cold' + 'storage', its computing sense (archival, rarely accessed data) is a metaphorical extension where 'cold' signals low activity. This mapping is somewhat inferable but potentially ambiguous for a B1 learner without technical context, so the expression is partially but not fully transparent.

Etymology

Cold storage as 'kept unused' comes from the picture of putting things into a cold storage room so they are left alone and do not change. That's why it means 'kept unused, inactive, or postponed'.