Chili

How to spell chili

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chili

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chili mean?

1. nounA small, hot-tasting pod of the capsicum plant, used fresh or dried to add heat to food.
2. nounA spicy stew of meat, beans, and ground peppers, also called chili con carne.

Chili in a sentence

• She chopped a fresh red chili into the salsa.

• He simmered a big pot of chili for the game-day party.

• The recipe calls for one dried chili soaked in warm water.

• The diner served chili with cornbread on the side.

Where does chili come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word traces back to chilli in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, where it named the hot pepper plant native to Central America. Spanish colonists encountered the spice in the 1500s and adopted it as chile, and English took the word in the 1600s, settling on the spelling chili. The original Nahuatl term referred strictly to the pungent pod itself, but in American English the name was later stretched to cover the famous stew of meat, beans, and ground peppers known as chili con carne, literally 'chilli with meat'. Because the word arrived through several hands, English never fully agreed on its shape: American writers favour chili, British writers usually double the l as chilli, and the spelling chile survives too. The single-l form here is the spelling that can trip writers who are used to seeing chilli or who confuse it with the everyday weather word chilly.

How the word is built

• chili (from Nahuatl chilli, the pepper); no prefix or suffix, a single borrowed root

British and American spelling

Chili is the American spelling. British English spells it chilli.

Words that sound like chili

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• chilly: Uncomfortably cool, though not freezing.