# in the cold light of day
## English
### Etymology

Probably an allusion to a situation being seen more clearly in daylight, and after some time has passed. The word cold is used in the sense of “dispassionate; not prejudiced or partisan; impartial”.

### Pronunciation

* (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ɪn‿ðə ˈkəʊld laɪt‿əv ˈdeɪ/
* (General American) IPA: /ɪn‿ðə ˈkoʊld laɪt‿əv ˈdeɪ/
* Rhymes: -eɪ
* Audio (US):(file)

### Prepositional phrase

in the cold light of day
* Viewed calmly and dispassionately after allowing emotions to cool or after having sobered up.
    Antonym: in the heat of the moment
    In the cold light of day, I felt I had overreacted.
** 1912 March, Burton E[gbert] Stevenson, “Preparations”, in The Mystery of the Boule Cabinet: A Detective Story, New York, N.Y.: Dodd, Mead & Company, published 1918, →OCLC, page 119:In my over-wrought state of the night before, it had seemed reasonable enough; but here, in the cold light of day, it seemed preposterous.
** 2016, Susan Greenfield, “Dreaming”, in A Day in the Life of the Brain: The Neuroscience of Consciousness from Dawn till Dusk, London: Penguin Books, published 2017, →ISBN:To the dreamer, a dream can seem at the time eerily indistinguishable from everyday consciousness yet, in retrospect, upon waking, so self-evidently different. The fragmented narrative, the improbability of much of what happens – flying, for example, or the transmogrification of one individual suddenly into another, and so on – seem ludicrous, even embarrassing, in the cold light of day.
** 2018 August 16, Marshmello, Steve Mac, Dan Smith (lyrics and music), “Happier”, performed by Marshmello and Bastille:In the cold light of day, we're a flame in the wind / Not the fire that we've begun.
* Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see in,‎ the,‎ cold,‎ light,‎ of,‎ day: during the day; in daylight.
** 1853, Anna Mary Howitt, “The Casting of the Sieges-Thor, Bavaria”, in An Art-student in Munich. […], volume II, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC, page 178:And above the crowd of living figures rise colossal forms of armed warriors, and peaceful poets, and sceptred monarchs; these glowing crimson; those standing calm and pale in the cold light of day.
** 1989, Rüdiger Safranski, “Weimar”, in Ewald Osers, transl., Schopenhauer and the Wild Years of Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, published 1991, →ISBN, book 1, page 72:However subtle the social pecking order may have been, the outsider entering the famous town with high expectations saw it in the cold light of day shrink into a philistine backwoods dump.

#### Translations
### See also

* morning after
* at the end of the day

### References

* ↑ “in the cold light of day”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present, reproduced from Christine Ammer, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, →ISBN.

### Further reading

* “in the cold light of day”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
* “in the cold light of day” (US) / “in the cold light of day” (UK) in Macmillan English Dictionary.
* “in the cold light of day”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
* “in the cold light of day” in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Longman.