chill
/tʃɪl/ noun, adjective, verb, contraction, proper noun
Also a form of child
Forms chills chilling chilled ch'ill 'chill
- noun A moderate, but uncomfortable and penetrating coldness. “There was a chill in the air.”
- noun A sudden penetrating sense of cold, especially one that causes a brief trembling nerve response through the body; the trembling response itself; often associated with illness: fevers and chills, or susceptibility to illness. “Close the window or you'll catch a chill.”
- noun An uncomfortable and numbing sense of fear, dread, anxiety, or alarm, often one that is sudden and usually accompanied by a trembling nerve response resembling the body's response to biting cold. “Despite the heat, he felt a chill as he entered the crime scene.”
- noun An iron mould or portion of a mould, serving to cool rapidly, and so to harden, the surface of molten iron brought in contact with it.
- noun The hardened part of a casting, such as the tread of a carriage wheel.
- noun A lack of warmth and cordiality; unfriendliness.
- noun Calmness; equanimity.
- noun A sense of style; trendiness; savoir faire.
- adjective Moderately cold or chilly. “A chill wind was blowing down the street.”
- adjective Unwelcoming; not cordial. “Arriving late at the wedding, we were met with a chill reception.”
- adjective (slang) Calm, relaxed, easygoing. “The teacher is really chill and doesn't care if you use your phone during class.”
- adjective (slang) "Cool"; meeting a certain hip standard or garnering the approval of a certain peer group. “That new movie was chill, man.”
- adjective (slang) Okay, not a problem. “Sorry about that. —It's chill.”
- verb (transitive) To lower the temperature of something; to cool. “Chill before serving.”
- verb (intransitive) To become cold. “In the wind he chilled quickly.”
- verb (transitive, metallurgy) To harden a metal surface by sudden cooling.
- verb (intransitive, metallurgy) To become hard by rapid cooling.
- verb (intransitive, slang) To relax; to lie back; to take things easy. “Chill, man, we've got a whole week to do it; no sense in getting worked up.”
- verb (intransitive, slang) To "hang", hang out; to spend time with another person or group. “Hey, we should chill this weekend.”
- verb (intransitive, slang) To smoke marijuana. “On Friday night do you wanna chill?”
Synonyms
laid-back unconcerned airy at ease at peace carefree careless casual cool devil-may-care easy-breezy easygoing happy-go-lucky indifferent insouciant leisurely lighthearted loose mellow offhand iciness gelidity frisson shiver quiver shudder thrill tingle shivering pall
Etymology
From Middle English chele, chile, from Old English ċiele, ċele (“cold; coldness”), from Proto-West Germanic *kali, from Proto-Germanic *kaliz, from Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to be cold”). Closely related with Dutch kil. Also akin to cool, cold, gel, and congeal, which see.
From Middle English chillen, from Old English ċilian (“to be cold”), from Proto-West Germanic *kilēn (“to be cold”). Cognate with Middle Dutch killen (“to be cold”), Dutch killen (“to be cold, shiver”).
From Middle English ichille, equivalent to ch- + will, from ich + will.
Variant of Child.
Webster’s 1913
- noun A moderate but disagreeable degree of cold; a disagreeable sensation of coolness, accompanied with shivering. "[A] wintry chill." W. Irving.
- noun A sensation of cold with convulsive shaking of the body, pinched face, pale skin, and blue lips, caused by undue cooling of the body or by nervous excitement, or forming the precursor of some constitutional disturbance, as of a fever.
- adjective Moderately cold; tending to cause shivering; chilly; raw. Noisome winds, and blasting vapors chill. Milton.
- adjective Affected by cold. "My veins are chill." Shak.
Etymology [AS. cele, cyle, from the same root as celan, calan, to be cold; akin to D. kil cold, coldness, Sw. kyla to chill, and E. cool. See Cold, and cf. Cool.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “chill”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details