Word.ws English Dictionary

chilling

/ˈt͡ʃɪlɪŋ/

chilling adjective: becoming cold. Also the present participle and gerund of chill.

Adjective

chilling (comparative more chilling, superlative most chilling)

  1. Becoming cold.
    • As they reached the street the ‘Duchess’ caught a swirling hem of lace about her chilling ankles.1936, Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, Faber & Faber, published 2007, page 22
  2. Causing cold.
  3. Causing mild fear.
    • It was a chilling story, but the children enjoyed it.
    • 22 March 2012, Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Gameshttp://www.avclub.com/articles/the-hunger-games,71293/
      Displaying a sturdy professionalism throughout that stops just short of artistry, director Gary Ross, who co-scripted with Collins and Billy Ray, does his strongest work in the early scenes...

Noun

chilling (plural chillings)

  1. The act by which something is chilled.
    • To such perceivings we give names like these: seeings, hearings, smellings, chillings and burnings, pleasures and pains, desires […]2004, Timothy D. J. Chappell, Reading Plato's Theaetetus, page 73

Also used as

chilling is also the present participle and gerund of chill.

chilling meaning in Kannada and Arabic

chilling in Kannada

ತಣ್ಣಗಾಗುವುದು

chilling in Arabic

causing mild fear
مرعبه, مخيف, زاحف

Examples of chilling in a sentence

  • He was chilling out with his girlfriend in the swimming pool.
  • I finished all my work early today and now we're bing chilling.
  • But the mere fact that we even have to ask this question is chilling.

All 32 example sentences with chilling

Forms of chilling

Adjective
comparativemore chilling
superlativemost chilling
Noun
pluralchillings

Origin of chilling

From Middle English chilling, chelling, chyllinge, chillynge, chillande, equivalent to chill + -ing.

From Middle English chilling, chillyng, chyllynge, equivalent to chill + -ing.

Words formed from chilling

Phrases with chilling

Words that rhyme with chilling

10 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about chilling

What does chilling mean?
Chilling means becoming cold.
What is chilling in Kannada?
Chilling in Kannada is ತಣ್ಣಗಾಗುವುದು. See Chilling meaning in Kannada.
What part of speech is chilling?
Chilling can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce chilling?
Chilling is pronounced /ˈt͡ʃɪlɪŋ/.

Words near chilling in the dictionary

  1. chillin
  2. chillin'
  3. chillin' like a villain
  4. chilliness
  5. chillinesses
  6. chilling
  7. chilling effect
  8. chilling effects
  9. chilling it with
  10. chilling out
  11. chilling to the bone

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chilling (page history and authors); chilling (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-chilling.wav.

Cite this entry: “chilling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chilling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.