George Orwell was the first to use the term in print. It was a 1945 essay entitled "You and the Atomic Bomb," in which he discussed the hypothetical possibility of "a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours."

Two years later, in 1947, Bernard Baruch first used the term to describe the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union:

"Let us not be deceived—we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success. The peace of the world is the hope and the goal of our political system; it is the despair and defeat of those who stand against us. We can depend only on ourselves."

Baruch's speech, along with Walter Lippmann's book The Cold War from the same year, began to bring the term into the public consciousness.