Chilli

How to spell chilli

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chilli

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chilli mean?

1. nounA small hot-tasting pod of the capsicum plant, used fresh, dried, or powdered to add heat to food.
2. nounA spiced stew of minced meat, beans, and chilli peppers, short for chilli con carne.

Chilli in a sentence

• She chopped a fresh red chilli into the curry to add heat.

• He simmered a big pot of chilli con carne for the party.

• A teaspoon of dried chilli powder gives the sauce its kick.

• The pub serves a vegetarian chilli with kidney beans and rice.

Where does chilli come from?

Language of origin: Spanish

This word travelled into English from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs, where chilli named the fiery pod of the capsicum plant. Spanish colonists in Central America adopted it as chile, and from Spanish it spread across Europe and into English from the seventeenth century onward. The original Nahuatl term referred specifically to the pungent fruit, and that sense has stayed remarkably stable: a chilli today is still the same hot pod the Aztecs cultivated and dried. British English settled on the spelling with a doubled l, chilli, while American English kept the single-l chili closer to the Spanish form, and the dish chilli con carne (literally 'chilli with meat' in Spanish) carries the same root. The tricky part for writers is that chilli is a perfect sound-alike for chilly, meaning cold, so the spelling rather than the sound has to carry the meaning.

How the word is built

• chilli (from Nahuatl chilli, the pepper of the capsicum plant); no prefix or suffix, the doubled -ll- reflects the British convention for this borrowing

British and American spelling

Chilli is the British spelling. American English spells it chili.

Words that sound like chilli

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

• chilly: Uncomfortably cool, though not freezing.