{"id":11328,"date":"2015-06-11T17:05:54","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T16:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=11328"},"modified":"2015-06-11T17:05:54","modified_gmt":"2015-06-11T16:05:54","slug":"in-the-cold-light-of-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=11328","title":{"rendered":"In the cold light of day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting expression I noticed recently is <strong>in the cold light of day<\/strong>. It is used to indicate that you are thinking about something calmly and clearly, and you might feel foolish, sorry or ashamed for thinking or doing that something. For example &#8220;The next morning, in the cold light of day, Sam realized that his ideas, which seemed so brilliant the night before, were complete nonsense.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>I hadn&#8217;t thought about it much before, but when I came across it today it struck me as slightly odd &#8211; can light be cold?<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/in+the+cold+light+of+day\">Dictionary.com<\/a>, &#8220;This expression transfers the illumination of daylight to rational understanding and uses cold to emphasize the lack of passion.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On <a href=\"http:\/\/www.answerbag.com\/q_view\/1660983\">AnswerBag<\/a> it&#8217;s suggested that this phrase originates in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/153\"><em>Jude the Obscure<\/em><\/a> by Thomas Hardy, published in 1894-5. A similar phrase certainly does appear in that book in the following extract, from the beginning of chapter 5:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t want any! I fear I ought not to have run away from that school! Things seem so different <strong>in the cold light of morning<\/strong>, don&#8217;t they? What Mr. Phillotson will say I don&#8217;t know! It was quite by his wish that I went there. He is the only man in the world for whom I have any respect or fear. I hope he&#8217;ll forgive me; but he&#8217;ll scold me dreadfully, I expect!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Do you know of any earlier uses of this phrase?<\/p>\n<p>Are there equivalents of this phrase in other languages?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting expression I noticed recently is in the cold light of day. It is used to indicate that you are thinking about something calmly and clearly, and you might feel foolish, sorry or ashamed for thinking or doing that something. For example &#8220;The next morning, in the cold light of day, Sam realized that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}