Meaning & Analysis
An event, piece of news, or action that serves to diminish someone's passion, confidence, or plans, much like a strategic card played in a game to thwart an opponent.
Insights
Sudden Setback
Represents an unexpected event or piece of information that abruptly halts progress, dashes hopes, or ruins a plan, effectively 'marring' an endeavor.
Dampened Passion
Symbolizes the quenching of intense emotions like love, ambition, or arrogance, reducing a 'heated' state to one of indifference, disappointment, or 'cold comfort.'
A Dose of Humility
Functions as a humbling corrective for overconfidence or arrogance, forcing an individual to confront a harsh reality and abandon their presumptuous attitude.
Card-Playing Metaphor
The proverb draws its power from the Elizabethan popularity of card games, where a 'card' is a strategic play. A 'cooling card' is thus a decisive, unexpected move that foils a confident opponent's strategy, as when Shakespeare writes, 'There all is marr'd; there lies a cooling card.'
Humoral Medicine Resonance
The language of 'cooling' is rooted in the historical medical theory of the four humors. It refers to reducing 'heat'—a state associated with passion, courage, and the liver—thereby correcting a temperamental imbalance and dampening excessive spirit.
Psychology of Deflation
The phrase vividly captures the psychological experience of sudden deflation—the shock and disappointment that follows the shattering of high expectations, fervent hopes, or arrogant assumptions.
Rhetorical Devices
Extended Metaphor
The entire phrase is a metaphor, using the concrete action of playing a card to represent the abstract concept of receiving a sudden, deflating setback.
Alliteration
The repeated hard 'c' sound in 'Cooling Card' gives the expression a sharp, memorable quality, enhancing its impact as a concise statement of misfortune.
Transcription
Quotations
Heavy newes for yow I can tell yow of a cowlinge carde.
I beleve for all hys dotage it wylbe a coolyng carde to abate the yoothes courage.
All louers .. are cooled with a carde of teene, or rather fooled with a vaine toy.
This newes was such a cooling Card to this Curtizan, that the extreame heate of her loue was already growne to bee luke warme.
Their livers were too hot, you know, and for temper sake they must needs have a cooling card plaid upon them.
And God sent us a Colling-card this Year for that heat.
That, besides herself, is a cooling Card.
A cooling Card, cold comfort, no hope.
Shakespeare Citations
There all is marr'd; there lies a cooling card.
Annotations
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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