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The idiom “in cold blood” means to act unemotionally, and its origin dates back to the medieval belief that a person’s emotions and internal fluids were connected. The phrase was first recorded in 1608 and was used in literature in 1711. Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood revived a style of journalism and caused controversy.
The phrase “in cold blood” is an idiom that means to act unemotionally, without feeling or passion. Today it is used more frequently when referring to emotionally unmotivated killings. The origin of the phrase dates back to the early 1600s and is based on a medieval medical belief.
Originally, this phrase was once thought to be much more literal than it is now considered. Early physicians once thought that a person’s emotions and internal fluids were closely connected. Blood, for example, was thought to literally heat up when a person became angry or passionate.
Conversely, when a person was calm, with little or no emotion, his blood was thought to be cold. So even if to say someone did something “in cold blood” in the 17th century meant they were calculated and emotionless. The person’s blood was also thought to be literally colder than an individual who was emotional. The terms “cold-blooded” and “warm-blooded” also derive from this idea.
Some linguists also think that the phrase may have originally been translated directly from the French word sang-froid. Sang-froid means “calmly” or “with composure,” but literally translates to “bloody.” However, the French term has a generally positive connotation while “in cold blood” is more often used in a negative sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first recorded use of the phrase “in cold blood” was in 1608 by an English soldier, Sir Francis Vere, in his Commentaries of the Divers Pieces of Service. Vere said he was writing “a cold-blooded resolution”. The phrase was used in various documents over the next hundred years, appearing in literature in 1711 when Joseph Addison used the phrase in his periodical, The Spectator, to describe a murder.
Perhaps the most famous use of the term in recent history is Truman Capote’s 1965 book, In Cold Blood. Capote and the book gained fame and infamy when Capote, a journalist, swore the book’s account of events was pure fact simply told in a fictional style. Controversy erupted when several people featured in the book accused Capote of making up important scenes and misrepresenting characters. Infamous or not, the book revived a style of journalism used by Mark Twain nearly a century earlier. Now dubbed New Journalism, Capote’s fiction writing techniques are considered essential in most journalistic philosophies.
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