Entry · catalog no. 7091

chill

/ /tʃɪl/ /CHIL

verb · U.S. Northeast, urban · 1970s

✓ Verified

To relax, calm down, or spend time at ease without stress or urgency; also used as a command telling someone to ease off an argument, a temper, or excitement. Extended as 'chill out' for the same act of cooling down a mood or a moment, and as 'chillin'' for the ongoing state of hanging out unhurried, often with others.

“We ain't got nowhere to be, so just chill and let the night ride out.”

Origin & Attribution

Descended from Black jazz argot of the 1930s–40s, where 'cool' named a whole style of composure under pressure; that same community carried the temperature metaphor forward, and by the late 1960s and 1970s Black speakers in Northern cities were using 'chill' and 'chill out' to mean easing a hot temper or a tense room. Mainstream sources often misfile the phrase under 'hippie culture' or a 1980s cereal-mascot catchphrase, but the documented trail — from jazz clubs to early hip-hop records — runs through Black vernacular first.

1930s-40s

Black jazz slang establishes 'cool' as a term of composure, the linguistic root 'chill' later draws from

1972

Use of 'chill' meaning to calm down appears in print, indicating it was already everyday language

1979

The line 'we'll just leave her alone and just chill out' appears in Sugarhill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight'

Region of origin

West

Midwest

N.East

South

The Northeast

U.S. Northeast, urban · 1970s

Spoken by

Black urban communities, jazz and early hip-hop scenes, later absorbed into general American youth slang

$CHILLThe Record · cultural traction

▲ Standard

54 yrs

ahead of the mainstream

90/100

peak cultural energy

Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.

Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest

First used

1972

in the culture

Recorded here

2026

point of first record

Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.

Hear it spoken

By region — how it actually sounds

@bxgriot

The Bronx, NY

@phillyanne

Philadelphia, PA

Contribute your pronunciation

Citations & Sources

■

the modern usage of chill starts coming around in the 1970s, from Black slang

article/Atlas Obscura

■

Chill, to me, is a lineal descendant of cool, and cool, of course, is very, very old

quote from Jonathon Green, slang lexicographer

■

AAVE has also contributed many words and phrases to other varieties of English, including chill out

reference/Wikipedia

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