The phrase "a tough cold" is not standard in written English and may cause confusion.
It could be used informally to describe a particularly severe or difficult cold, such as a cold illness.
Example: "After battling a tough cold for a week, I finally felt well enough to return to work."
Alternatives: "a severe cold" or "a bad cold".
"There was a tough, cold winter.
"This funding could make a difference for the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens, who have faced a tough, cold and financially backbreaking winter, with energy costs threatening to swamp their family food and medicine budgets," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman said in a statement when the grant was announced on March 23.
On Snowden, because Putin is a tough Cold War-era KGB colonel pleased to have a big propaganda and intelligence asset delivered to him on a silver platter.
There's nothing wrong with having a tough, cold attitude when it comes to getting ahead - unless you're taking it so far that you do real damage to another person.
But it seemed more a re-enactment, even an allegory, of the past: a frontier 40 years old, still manned, but shrunk, on this wet night, by a tougher, colder climate.
Played with ferocious intensity by The Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner, Cross is a tougher, colder character than Damon's scrupulous spook.
He is especially miserable during the five years, starting at age 7, spent in a "poor, tough, cold" boarding school in a Flemish village.
The other side to it, is that for many people it is a tough and cold place to grow up.
February can be a tough month: cold, damp, cloudy, raw, devoid of major celebrations and thereby providing very little excuse for not knuckling down and getting some work done.
The lady of the house, Ms. Burkey had heard, was "tough, cold and devoted to the house above everything".
But I get the feeling that what most people mean or hear when they say or hear "strong female character" is female characters who are tough, cold, terse, taciturn and prone to scowling and not saying goodbye when they hang up the phone.
