cool as admirable construction

Part of language Informal English
Meaning of the construction positive evaluation: admirable, relaxed, stylish, sophisticated, fashionable
comment first attested: 1884, cf. OED

Construction elements

Examples

Example 1

Text For years, anything more than a slick of Vaseline or a brush of mascara was considered too try-hard to be cool.
comment BNC Newspaper, 1992

Example 2

Text a cool outfit

Example 3

Text The movie is cool.

Links

Element of Cool! exclamative construction Informal English
is a metaphorical extension of cool (temperature) construction English

Research

Research Question Finding

Metadata

Date Created 2025-11-28
Annotator Julia Boos
Annotator Elizaveta Petrenko
Annotator Lina Weigelt
Annotator Elodie Winckel

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