chills

1. 1
   nouncountableplural

   A bodily response in which goose bumps form, brought on by being tickled, by cold, or by fear, euphoria or sexual arousal.

   The final scene of the movie gave the whole audience chills.

   His soft whisper against her ear sent chills along her spine.

   Similarshivers, goosebumps

   Note

   Pleasure and fear share this one bodily signal, so a favorite song, a feathery touch on the neck and a stumble near a cliff edge can all produce it. The word stays plural here and lives in a few fixed patterns: you get chills, something gives you the chills, a whisper sends chills along your spine, or you feel chills across your whole body.

2. 2
   nouncountableplural

   A sensation of coldness that occurs as a symptom of many medical conditions.

   Common flu symptoms include fever, chills and muscle aches.

   The patient reported chills and night sweats for three days after surgery.

   Similarshivers

   Note

   A word from the symptom list: patients report chills alongside fever, muscle aches or night sweats, and the noun stays plural. Here the cold comes from illness rather than from weather or emotion, which is what separates it from the goose-bump response to a song or a scare, even though both are felt as a sudden cold.

3. 3
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of chill.

   The machine chills the dough quickly before it is rolled out.

   The soup chills fast once the pot sits in an ice bath.

   Note

   Every meaning of the verb passes through this form, and they split on whether an object follows. With one, it cools or hardens something: the machine chills the dough, a foundry chills a metal surface. Without one, a thing becomes cold, or, in slang, a person relaxes or hangs out: he chills with friends on weekends. The spelling is shared with the plural noun.

4. 4
   noun

   Plural of chill.

   Workers set iron chills into the mold so the wheel's tread would cool hard and fast.

   Repeated diplomatic chills between the two capitals slowed the trade talks.

   Note

   The ordinary plural reaches into the foundry, where chills are iron pieces set into a mold so that molten iron touching them cools fast and hardens, as in the tread of a carriage wheel. Figuratively, chills can be repeated spells of unfriendliness between people or countries. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, as in the fridge chills the wine, and only the sentence tells them apart.

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