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There are many, many terms in English that include hot or cold in them. I will give a small sample of such terms:

Hot

  • hot job
  • hot fix
  • hot offer
  • warm regards

Cold

  • cold calls
  • cold emails
  • cold hearted
  • cold blooded

English is spoken in hot as well as cold regions of the world, and there are native English-speaking people in both the northern and southern hemispheres (the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa).

So why then is hot considered something positive and cold considered something negative, and when did this first start happening in the English Language?

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    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Jun 4 at 12:48
  • 4
    A hot mess is bad and a cold brew is good.
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented Jun 5 at 2:35
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    Interesting question... I'd be interested in knowing if the same or the reverse is the case in other languages. In some philosophies there are associated pairs (like in yin-yang in East Asian cultures and hot-cold foods in Persian culture) where they are not good or bad just different associations.
    – Mitch
    Commented Jun 5 at 13:51
  • In the twentieth century (at least) a "cold war" was considered much preferable to a "hot war."
    – Sven Yargs
    Commented Jun 10 at 15:44

2 Answers 2

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I think it's possible to cherry-pick the evidence without realizing it.

For example,someone who was feeling reason-clouding ire was "hot-hearted" in Old English times. Today we might say "Don't get so hot under the collar" or "Don't be such a hot-head, hot-shot."

There's a long western tradition of associating heat with emotion, and the heat is not unequivocally "good".

And "bad" is too crude an assessment.

A "cold call" isn't derogatory, it's a call where a person is being called without having been "warmed" to the call so that they are awaiting it. If the caller cannot "break the ice" they may receive an icy response and the person on the other end may hang up.

It's important to "stay frosty" (alert and cool-headed) when on a dangerous military mission.

And in slang, both "hot" and "cool" are good things.

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While English is spoken around the world, it did not originate around the world. UK or even England can not be regarded as a warm country. So, Warm is obviously better than cold.

Also consider food as an example. Most of the food is cooked before eating, especially meat, potatoes and wheat, which would have been the bulk of the food eaten at the time English was developing. Again, hot is better. I know that salads are generally not cooked. However, even ice-cream has to be cooked before freezing.

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    Needs references.
    – GEdgar
    Commented Jun 4 at 18:23
  • To pick a nit ... potatoes weren't even a morsel of the diet of the people who first spoke English.
    – High Performance Mark
    Commented Jun 10 at 15:57
  • And, perhaps more to the point, the first two sentences of this answer do not form an argument leading to the conclusion expressed in the third sentence.
    – High Performance Mark
    Commented Jun 10 at 16:04

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