the.com/cool
the temperature you can't measure but everyone in the room can feel
means Moderately cold in the pleasant sense, or — figuratively — calm, fashionable, and effortlessly admirable.
from From Old English 'cōl,' meaning literally chilly, a sibling of German 'kühl' and rooted in the same ancient source as 'cold.' For most of its life it just described temperature and unbothered tempers (a 'cool head'). The slang sense of stylish, excellent, and self-possessed is a 20th-century American flowering, often credited to Black jazz culture, where 'cool' named a whole laid-back aesthetic of restraint — and from there it spread into the everyday word of approval it is today.
- jazz origin
- named a 1950s music genre defined by restraint
- body trick
- slang for calm long before it meant cold
- Yoruba root
- linked to 'itutu,' an ancient African aesthetic of composure
- survival math
- appearing unbothered is energy you choose not to spend
cool jazz — musical genre pioneered by miles davis and chet baker in the 1950s
cool britannia — cultural movement in 1990s britain under tony blair's government
cool hand luke — 1967 film starring paul newman as a defiant prison inmate