keep one's cool

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keep one's cool (third-person singular simple present keeps one's cool, present participle keeping one's cool, simple past and past participle kept one's cool)

1. (idiomatic) To remain composed, calm, and even-tempered, especially in a provocative situation.
   • 1982, George Jackson (lyrics and music), “Down Home Blues”, performed by Z. Z. Hill:

     All week long I've been keepin' my cool / But tonight I'm gonna let my hair down / And get down with these down home blues

   • 1990 October 11, Michael Martinez, “THE PLAYOFFS: By the Way, Stewart Leads A's Into Series”, in New York Times, retrieved 3 June 2009:

     In the heat of the afternoon, while Roger Clemens threw a temper tantrum and the Boston Red Sox became unraveled, Dave Stewart kept his cool.

   • 2009 June 4, Kevin Purdy, Lukas Alpert, “‘The Next Thing I Knew the Ceiling Was on Me’”, in New York Post, retrieved 3 June 2009:

     Fighting back panic, she tried to keep her cool and find a way out from under the rubble.

   • 2022 August 30, Johnson Lai, “Taiwan leader tells troops to keep cool amid Chinese threats”, in The Washington Post‎, archived from the original on 30 August 2022, World:

     Taiwan’s president told the self-ruled island’s military units Tuesday to keep their cool in the face of daily warplane flights and warship maneuvers by rival China, saying that Taiwan will not allow Beijing to provoke a conflict.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:keep one's cool.

• keep a cool head
• have one's wits about one

• blow one's cool
• lose one's cool