Illustrative Context

The rocks get hot during the day and cold at night.

Target Sense

• The default antonym of hot.
• The most basic term, typically adjectival, that covers the largest span of temperatures lower than neutral, and the middle ground of that span of temperatures (within sensible bounds of the usual temperature range in human experience).
• This should be a generic, relative term, not a specific and absolute one such as ice cold, freezing cold.
• Avoid marked, loaded, judgement terms for excessively cold, or not cold enough.
• Aim for the term covering the broadest range of tactile, ambient and personal uses.
• Avoid narrow terms limited to specific uses, e.g. cold only of food, only of liquids, only of weather, and so on.
• Avoid resultative or change of state terms for made cold, cooled, chilled.
• Select the default, unmarked term, i.e. avoid both intensifying terms for particularly cold, ‘freezing’; and qualifying, weakening terms such as (only) cool.

References

• On the contrasts of ambient vs. tactile in languages of Vanuatu (François 2015), and in Japanese.
• On the contrasts of tactile vs. ambient vs. personal (Koptjeskaja-Tamm 2011).
• On the contrasts between terms for things which are cold, and which have become cold, i.e. ‘cooled down’ (Bowern and Kling 2015).