cold water

1. 1.

   disparagement of a plan or hope or expectation

   “she poured cold water on the whole idea of going to Africa”

   Broaderdisparagement

Questions about cold water

What does cold water mean?

cold water means "disparagement of a plan or hope or expectation".

Is cold water a common word?

cold water is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.