To disrespect someone, especially by ignoring them; to slight or snub someone.
Perhaps I want to get even with some of the people who cold-shouldered me last year—put it that way if it sounds better.1905, Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC:
There had been the lamentable case of Sledonti, the dramatic poet, who had been belittled and cold-shouldered in the Owl Street hall of judgment, and had been afterwards hailed as a master singer by the Grand Duke Constantine Constantinovitch […].1914, Saki [pseudonym; Hector Hugh Munro], “(please specify the chapter or story)”, in Beasts and Super-Beasts […], London: John Lane, The Bodley Head […], →OCLC:
2 more examples
Not that any department of the work here is neglected or cold-shouldered, I hope—no, I am sure it isn't. For instance, neither of us really cares for natural history, but we recognize that others will think differently […]1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries:
If the peculiar Mr Heaton had first accosted her yesterday instead of six weeks ago, she would have cold-shouldered him without hesitation.2006, Michel Faber, The Apple, Canongate Books, page 23:
Idiomatic A deliberate act of disrespect; a slight or snub.
Winterbourne wondered how she felt about all the cold shoulders that were turned toward her, and sometimes it annoyed him to suspect that she did not feel at all.1879, Henry James, Daisy Miller, London: Harper & Brothers:
I went meekly aboard a few of the boats that lay packed together like sardines at the long St. Louis wharf, and very humbly inquired for the pilots, but got only a cold shoulder and short words from mates and clerks.1883, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], Life on the Mississippi, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, →OCLC: