to cool down
28
1.1
- phrasal verb
- /kuːl daʊn/
:
enfriarse
- You may find it's in your best interests to maintain your present domicile until things cool down a bit.
Warm up and also cool down and stretch.
- Warm up and also cool down and stretch.
- This is because water heats up and cools down much more slowly than land.
- Now this side is cooling down and that side is heating up.
- This cools me down and keeps me cool all night long.
- So whatever, cool it down, add some liquid to it, extract.
- OK, There's really no way to cool it efficiently down to that level.
- But there is a technique to cool atoms, individual atoms down with laser light.
Examples
-
I thought it was going to cool down, but it's still as hot.
-
Irene will need at least one hour to cool down.
-
And so in order to cool it down, we change the state.
-
I think we should cool it down before you get into trouble.
-
I cool down my coffee before drinking it.
-
Meanwhile, my coffee grounds will cool down and dry out.
Fiction book (1999) -
Exposed to the wind, our old gas station was cooling down fast.
Fiction book (1999) -
And usually when you cool something down, it shrinks.
-
On most nights, it started to cool down by nine o'clock.
Fiction book (1999) -
You should let the soup cool down before serving it to avoid burning your mouth.
Synonyms
256
1.0
To make or become less warm
84
1.0
To make food or drink cold, often in the fridge
50
2.7
To become calmer, less angry, or less hot
1
7.1
To cool hot metal quickly in water or oil to make it hard
To make something warmer or cooler
Antonyms
How Hot
Surface Forms
Morphology
The verb 'cool' already carries the sense of reducing intensity and combined with the particle 'down' (indicating decrease or reduction) the idiom's meaning 'become less angry/excited' is directly inferable from the parts. This is a common, compositional V+particle pattern found cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily understand the MWE.
Etymology
Cool down comes from the simple picture of heat moving away: cool means less hot and down means lower. If you take a hot pan off the stove and leave it, it will cool down, so the phrase means 'to become less hot' or 'to make something less hot'.