In the early 1990s, Michael Lewis described the lexical approach to learning and teaching language. The concept centers on the idea that language is spoken and understood in phrases or “chunks.”
Some chunks might be set phrases like:
by the way
up to now
upside down
If I were you
a long way off
out of my mind
Other chunks are collocations (words that are often or always found next to each other or “co-located”):
totally convinced
strong accent
terrible accident
piping hot
bitterly cold
(examples from The British Council)
In Ask an English Teacher (on my Facebook page), I talked about common collocations with hot and cold.
Many of these adjectives are ONLY used to talk about food or the weather. They are only “collocated” with hot and cold.
Collocations with “hot” and “cold”
HOT
FOOD: piping hot, steaming hot (positive)
WEATHER: blazing hot, stifling hot, scorching hot, blistering hot, sweltering hot (negative)
EITHER: sizzling hot, scalding hot, boiling hot
COLD
FOOD OR WEATHER: freezing cold ice cream or day, icy cold drink, frosty beer
WEATHER: biting cold or biting wind, bitterly cold
OTHER COLLOCATIONS TO DESCRIBE COLD WEATHER
a cold snap or a cold spell
a crisp day (cold and dry)
brisk weather (cold with a wind; often used as an understatement)
harsh climate (extremely cold and unpleasant)
a bleak weekend forecast (cold, grey, little hope for pleasant weather)