give someone the cold shoulder

Meaning

Verb

• To snub, resist or reject somebody; to regard somebody distantly.

Origin

• First recorded use of the expression was in 1816 by Sir Walter Scott in Scots (“The Countess’s dislike didna gang farther at first than just showing o’ the cauld shouther”.) This expression and its German equivalent are mistranslations of dederunt umerum recedentem from the Book of Nehemiah 9.29 from the Vulgate Bible, which actually means "stubbornly they turned their backs on you", which comes from the Septuagint Bible's equivalent ἔδωκαν νῶτον ἀπειθοῦντα. Latin umerus means both "shoulder" and "back".