chilling

Pluralchillings

1. 1
   adjective

   Causing a feeling of mild fear.

   Her calm, flat voice on the recording was chilling.

   The campers traded chilling tales about a figure seen walking the shore at night.

   Similarfrightening, eerie, disturbing, unnerving, scary

   Oppositereassuring, comforting

   Note

   Fear is named here by the shiver it sends over the skin, the cold of the weather sense felt from the inside. It is usually a mild, even welcome fear: a chilling story is one children can still enjoy. Because the spellings match, a chilling wind on a dark night may be cold, eerie or both, and only the surrounding words settle which.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of chill.

   Chilling the dough for an hour makes it much easier to roll out.

   They spent the afternoon chilling with friends by the pool.

   Note

   Every use of the verb runs through this form: chilling the dough cools it, chilling a metal surface hardens it by sudden cooling, and in slang chilling with friends means relaxing or hanging out. As a gerund it takes a direct object, chilling cooked rice quickly; the noun for the act takes of instead, as in rapid chilling of cooked rice.

3. 3
   adjective

   Causing cold; making someone or something cold.

   A chilling fog rolled in from the harbor, and everyone reached for a jacket.

   The chilling night air turned their breath to steam.

   Similarcold, icy, chilly, freezing, bitter

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of making something cold or cooling it down.

   Rapid chilling of cooked rice keeps bacteria from multiplying.

   The brewery adjusted the timing of each chilling to protect the flavor.

   Similarcooling, refrigeration

   Oppositeheating, warming

   Note

   The noun is countable, with the plural chillings, so a brewer can time each chilling. Timothy D. J. Chappell's Reading Plato's Theaetetus (2004) lists chillings beside seeings, hearings, smellings and burnings as kinds of perceiving, where the word names the felt experience of being chilled rather than the cooling of food or drink.

5. 5
   adjective

   In the process of becoming cold.

   He pulled his scarf up around his chilling ears as the sun dropped behind the hills.

   In the chilling cabin, the last of the stove's warmth was fading fast.

   Similarcooling

   Note

   Read it from the noun beside it. Ankles, ears and a cabin cannot make anything cold, so chilling there means they are losing their own warmth, as with the ankles in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood (1936). A wind takes the cold-causing meaning instead, and a story the frightening one; all three are chill plus -ing, differing in whether the chill is done or undergone.

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