Chills

How to spell chills

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce chills

What does chills mean?

1. nounRepeated shivering sensations of coldness, often a symptom of fever or fear.
2. verbMakes something cold, or (informally) relaxes and takes things easy.

Chills in a sentence

• noun

  The fever left him with aches and violent chills all night.

• verb

  The new fridge chills a six-pack in under an hour.

• noun

  The horror film gave the whole audience the chills.

• verb

  After a long week she chills on the sofa with a film.

Where does chills come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word goes back to the Old English noun 'cele' (also spelled 'ciele'), which simply meant cold, frost, or a cool sensation. It belonged to a wider family of Germanic words for coldness and is closely related to the words 'cold' and 'cool', all springing from the same ancient root meaning to freeze or grow cold. By the late medieval period the spelling had settled toward 'chill', and the word broadened from naming a temperature to naming the bodily shudder a person feels when cold or feverish. The verb sense, meaning to make something cold, grew naturally out of the noun in the same era. The plural and third-person form 'chills' simply adds the regular -s ending, so the spelling stays refreshingly predictable.

How the word is built

• chill (cold)
• -s (plural noun / third-person verb ending)