chill
/tʃɪl/
"chill" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“chill” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #5,304 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #5,304
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A moderate, but uncomfortable and penetrating coldness.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | chill |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /tʃɪl/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #5,304 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “chill” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for chill is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /tʃɪl/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,304 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. Wiktionary records 9 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for chill, with forms such as "cchill", "chhill", and "chil". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "chip", "chin", "coil", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 c… The correct English form is chill, spelled C-H-I-L-L.
Definition
- 1A moderate, but uncomfortable and penetrating coldness.
- 2A 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.
- 3An 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.
- 4An 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.
- 5The hardened part of a casting, such as the tread of a carriage wheel.
- 6A lack of warmth and cordiality; unfriendliness.
- 7Calmness; equanimity.
- 8A sense of style; trendiness; savoir faire.
- 9A chilling effect; an atmosphere of this.
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.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: cchill,chhill,chil,chlil,cihll,hcill
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of chill - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “chill”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is C-H-I-L-L - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /tʃɪl/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “chip” - see the side-by-side comparison. chill vs chip
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.