cold open

English

Etymology

From cold (“completely unprepared; without introduction”) +‎ open.

Noun

cold open (plural cold opens)

  1. (television) An opening segment shown before the opening credits, often there is no context given to the segment.
    • 2004, James Mendrinos, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Comedy Writing:
      The best way to find out how the series you're writing for uses teasers or cold opens is to get your hands on a script.
    • 2024 November 17, Zach Vasquez, “Saturday Night Live: Charli xcx has fun in otherwise middle of the road episode”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎[1], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 17 October 2026:
      Colin Jost and Michael Che cover the same ground as the cold open, reporting on Trump’s clown car cabinet picks […] .

Antonyms

See also

This page is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.