make someone's blood run cold

English

Alternative forms

• make the blood run cold

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

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Verb

make someone's blood run cold (third-person singular simple present makes someone's blood run cold, present participle making someone's blood run cold, simple past and past participle made someone's blood run cold)

1. (idiomatic) To cause a person to feel fear, horror, dread, or strong foreboding; to chill.
   • 1838, Boz [pseudonym; Charles Dickens], chapter 20, in Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy’s Progress. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I, II, or III), London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC:

     Here, he read of dreadful crimes that made the blood run cold.

   • 1897, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter 7, in Liza of Lambeth, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, published [1921], →OCLC:

     "Why, it mikes yer blood run cold: they 'ang a man on the stige; oh, it mide me creep all over!"

   • 1914, Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Man on the Train:

     "It just makes my blood run cold to read about it. And to think that the man who did it is still around the country somewhere—plotting other murders."

   • 2009 February 24, John Otis, “Colombia's Drug Extraditions: Are They Worth It?”, in Time:

     [T]he prospect of doing hard time in an American penitentiary was about the only thing that made Pablo Escobar's blood run cold.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:frighten

Translations

cause a person to feel fear

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: please add this translation if you can

• Dutch: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: pelottaa (fi), kauhistuttaa (fi), kammoksuttaa
• French: (colloquial) foutre les chocottes (fr), (colloquial) foutre les jetons (fr), faire peur (fr), glacer le sang (fr)
• German: einem das Blut in den Adern gefrieren lassen (literally “to make someone’s blood freeze in the veins”)
• Italian: gelare il sangue
• Latvian: likt kāda asinīm sastingt dzīslās
• Portuguese: gelar o sangue
• Russian: кровь застыла, сердце упало в пятки (krovʹ zastyla, serdce upalo v pjatki)

See also

• one's blood runs cold
• make someone's blood boil

References

• “make blood run cold”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.