Chilly

How to spell chilly

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce chilly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does chilly mean?

1. adjectiveUncomfortably cool, though not freezing.
2. adjectiveDistant or unfriendly in manner or atmosphere.

Chilly in a sentence

• The morning air felt chilly before the sun came up.

• The manager gave the latecomers a chilly reception.

• She pulled on a jumper because the office was chilly.

• There was a chilly silence after the awkward question.

Where does chilly come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the native Old English noun and verb 'chill', whose ancestor was 'ciele' (also spelled 'cele'), meaning coldness, cold air, or frost. That noun came from a Germanic root tied to the same family that gives us 'cold' and 'cool', all pointing back to the idea of low temperature. The adjective 'chilly' was formed inside English itself, simply by attaching the common adjective ending '-y' to 'chill', and it is first recorded in the late 1500s. From the start it carried both the literal sense of unpleasantly cool weather and a figurative sense of an unwelcoming, distant manner. The double 'l' is the spelling trap worth noting: 'chill' already ends in a doubled 'l', so 'chilly' keeps both before the '-y'.

How the word is built

• chill (root meaning cold)
• -y (adjective suffix)

Words that sound like chilly

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

• chili: A small, hot-tasting pod of the capsicum plant, used fresh or dried to add heat to food.
• chilli: A small hot-tasting pod of the capsicum plant, used fresh, dried, or powdered to add heat to food.