Literal translation
It's a wolf's cold.
Meaning
it's bitterly cold
Explanation
This expression, identical in structure and image to its French and English equivalents, links a particularly sharp cold to the figure of the wolf, an animal long feared in the Provençal countryside and associated with the rigours of winter, a season when it drew closer to human dwellings out of necessity. The wolf functions here as an intensifier, a figurative unit of measure: of wolf simply means extreme, at its peak. This kind of construction, a cold of followed by an animal or figure reputed to be harsh or fearsome, appears in several languages, suggesting an old, widely shared image extending well beyond Provençal alone. It is said in ordinary register, in any situation where one wants to stress the intensity of the cold felt, with no particular nuance setting the Provençal apart from its French or English equivalent, beyond the local colour lent by using Provençal itself.