English Help Online's Blog

If you have a small apartment like many people do in Japan, this week’s adjective is a useful one for you: “cozy”. We use it when we want to talk about a place which is very small but which is also very comfortable and has a warm atmosphere. For example:

My apartment is very small, but it’s really cozy. I like it a lot!

I know a cozy little cafe we can go to. It’s just down this street.

I want to go somewhere cozy with my wife to celebrate our anniversary.

In these cases, the place must always be small. A large place can never be described as “cozy”. Also, if a place is small but not comfortable, it cannot be called “cozy”.

We can also use it to describe a situation in which we feel warm and comfortable. For example:

It’s so warm and cozy in my bed in the mornings. It’s really hard for me to get up.

We have a fireplace in my house. In the winters, we like to sit in front of a cozy fire and listen to music.

Sometimes, we use this word sarcastically. That means we mean the opposite of what we say. For example:

The train was packed with people last night. It was so cozy!

In this case, the person uses “cozy” in a sarcastic way. Because the train was packed with people and it WASN’T comfortable, they use the word “cozy”. When we are speaking in a sarcastic way, our voices go down to indicate that we’re being sarcastic.