Word of the Week – Cooler

When we think of a cooler, we think of a portable, insulated box that keeps things cold, right? That’s certainly the most common use these days, anyway.

But when cooler first joined the English language in the 1570s, it was instead referring to a vessel in which you’d put something hot that needed to cool off. (My family owns a farm, and in the shed there’s a cooler, which is an entire room, a walk-in refrigerator, which clearly comes from that same idea of making cool, not keeping cool.)

This “cool off” meaning was what led cooler to be adopted as a slang term for “jail” in 1884.

So what about those portable boxes? Those weren’t invented and named until 1944!

Word Nerds Merch!