give someone the cold shoulder

present singular third person gives someone the cold shoulder · participle present giving someone the cold shoulder · past gave someone the cold shoulder · participle past given someone the cold shoulder · alternative turn the cold shoulder on someone · alternative turn a cold shoulder on someone

1. idiomaticTo snub, resist or reject somebody; to regard somebody distantly.

   I must have made him angry with my comment. He’s been giving me the cold shoulder ever since I said it.

   2 more examples

   The Pope had given him the cold shoulder, but since he had not prospered as a diplomatist, he had sought compensation as a man of the world, and his great flamboyant curricle and negro lackeys were for several weeks one of the striking ornaments of the Pincian.

   1875 January–December, Henry James, Jr., Roderick Hudson, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., published 1876, →OCLC; republished as Roderick Hudson (EBook #176), U.S.A.: Project Gutenberg, 18 September 2016

   “What will they do to me?” “They will give you the cold shoulder. Do you know what that means?” Daisy was looking at him intently; she began to color.

   1879, Henry James, Daisy Miller, London: Harper & Brothers