No, it means cold as in almost freezing.
"Ice cold water": an oxymoron?
Certainly not by the original & proper meaning of oxymoron: the deliberate juxtaposition of contrasting words, e.g. “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
But it has now acquired the mindless meaning “contradiction in terms”. A great pity to see an elegant and subtle word trashed beyond redemption.
Right. Like ‘Swiss Cheese’
From News Radio:
Jimmy James: [about the word “non-profit”] It’s an oxymoron.
Dave Nelson: You mean like military intelligence.
Jimmy James: Yeah, or Swiss cheese.
Y’know, one of the things I really enjoy about the SDMB is the fact that one can post a mundane and pointless (indeed, silly) question; and get some solid, factual answers in addition to those that respond in a fun way. Thank you all for the answers, both serious and not-so-serious.
I do have to say, this response made me laugh out loud:
I sure did. Thanks for the laugh, glee!
The OP is from Canada. In my very limited experience, folks from the frozen wastelands don’t understand that in the desert, any water that is colder than the ambient temp is “ice cold”
They also tend to get brain freeze the first time they come across water stores.
Ignorance can be fixed 
Now you know you are wrong. “Ice cold water” means the water is just a chunk of ice.
Years ago, after spending some time camping in Baxter State Park in Maine, a friend and myself saw a store in Patten advertising Hot Showers and Ice Cold Ice. We have always laughed that it must have been colder than regular ice.
You win the thread.
My understanding is that water can exist in solid and liquid form at 0°C. Though not simultaneously.
Anybody who’s ever numbed a wrist reaching into a store bin full of chilled sodas knows ice cold water. That ice slurry could give you a brain freeze through your arm.
Check out some phase change diagrams for water. There is a definite flat part at zero Celsius. Once ice gets to 0 C, an extra 334 J/g of heat must be added to melt the ice. The water that results from this melting will still be at 0 C, which is why the line stays flat.
Making ice-cold water is easy. Water with ice floating in it, if it’s at thermal equilibrium (it probably will be), will be ice cold. The temperature will be the same no matter how much ice there is. You can also have pure ice or pure liquid water at this temperature, though adding any heat at all to the ice, or taking any heat at all out of the liquid, will cause some of it to change state.
This is what I was going to say. (Minus the personal experience, though, since I’ve never worked in a lab.)
Actually, the fact that water is ‘super-cooled’ doesn’t say anything more specific about the temperature other than it’s below the freezing point. If you cool the water fast enough and there’s nothing for the water to crystalize around, it could be considered super-cooled. Whether that super-cooled water is one degree below freezing, or 50 degrees below freezing, it’s still considered super-cooled.
That said if it’s only 1-degree, it may not do any real damage. After all, you can eat ice without damage if it’s just a bit below freezing in temperature. Same basic idea.
Ice-cold water is simply water that’s as cold as ice. No contradiction.
Water doesn’t turn into ice right at 0 degrees. It has to give off considerable heat (generally, staying at that temperature) before it solidifies into ice.
Likewise, water at 100 degrees isn’t necessarily boiling. It may be “boiling hot” but not boiling. You have to pump lots of heat into it before it begins the phase transition into water vapor.
Never thought of ice water as water from melting ice before this, but if so your question is solved.
1 -If ice water means water from melting ice
2 - and cold water means below ambient temp
3 - Then ice cold water means water at the temp of ice water that which coldness is not due to be recently thawed into the liquid state.
It could also mean melt water that has not yet warmed up yet.
Unless it’s super-cooled, yes it’s actually at 0 degrees C. True, it sheds energy to freeze, but that does not actually change its temperature, it changes its state. Measure the temperature of slowly cooling water just before and immediately after it freezes, and both will be at the same temperature. True, you can continue to cool it beyond 0 degrees, but that has nothing to do with what you are saying. At the transition point (0 degrees at atmospheric pressure), water can exist in both the liquid and solid phases.
Water that was supercooled to -1C would actually have less potential to hurt you than the equivalent amount of ice. The latent heat of fusion for water is 33J/g
That means that it takes 333J to melt 1g of ice.
So, if you swallowed 1 gram of ice at 0C, it would take 333J to melt it and turn it into water at 0C. If you drank 1 cc of water at -1C it would only take 1J to turn that into water at 0C.
Yo, ice cold wooder here. You got a problem with that?
And when it can’t, there’s duct tape.