Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Variant of chili.
Wiktionary
- n. US, dialect, South, African American Vernacular child.
- n. US, regional A chili pepper.
Etymologies
- From Spanish (Wiktionary)
Examples
“It would probably be more in order to wonder why the Spanish word chile appears so often as chili.”
“A medium with chile is my choice, plus a soft drink or agua de jamaica.”
“There was a pork in chile sauce on the menu that I was leaning toward so I asked the waiter if it was chile verde but he said, "no".”
“When she finds chile on a menu, it is almost certain to be part of the phrase chile con carne, perfectly good Mexican for a dish which presumably originated in that part of the country which became Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.”
“A buddy from Texas and a chili aficionado -- who, by the way, prefers using the New Mexican spelling of "chile" -- told me the other week that more and more varieties of peppers, formerly only available in the Southwest, are making their way across the country to groceries and specialty stores.”
“Even if they had the money, and sure guides on good, well-guarded trails, it would be bad enough; as it is …" He shrugged, and recommended wine of El Paso (which was excellent), and a fricassee of tender buffalo hump with fiery peppers, called chile colorado (also first-rate, if your belly happens to be lined with copper; if I'd eaten it at Bent's Fort I could have blown the place up without gunpowder).”
“He shrugged, and recommended wine of El Paso (which was excellent), and a fricassee of tender buffalo hump with fiery peppers, called chile colorado (also first-rate, if your belly happens to be lined with copper; if I'd eaten it at Bent's Fort I could have blown the place up without gunpowder).”
“He spread his wings lak he wuz gointer fly on off an 'I _cried_ lak a chile!”
“Well, you see, dey had a gal dere, and she had a chile, and dis yer chile was a little thing.”
Dred; A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. In Two Volumes. Vol. II
“Island Snacks is recalling chile lemon pistachios.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘chile’.
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food collection
bread, peel, pot, chorizo, Filet, olive, fill, Phyllo, dough, bake, mat, pinot and 988 more...
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genus capsicum
you may want to get a glass of water
(this is not strictly a list of cultivars; preparations and other related terms may be included)diablo grande, capsicum annuum, chile pequin, morita chile, fatalii, mulato chile, datil, tabiche, yatsafusa, red savina, dundicut, sriracha and 135 more...
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Capitonyms or capitonyms
Capitonyms are, properly, words which change meaning and sound when they change case. This particular list may also erringly include words which change meaning, but not sound. These are improper. S...
Turkey, turkey, China, china, August, august, Bill, bill, Catholic, catholic, Ionic, ionic and 94 more...
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Countries the United States has bombe...
Or has paid other countries to bomb/invade.
afghanistan, angola, bolivia, bosnia, burma, cambodia, colombia, dominican republic, east timor, egypt, el salvador, guatemala and 43 more...
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Salt and Pepper
long pepper, pepper, salt, salt and pepper, Salt-n-Pepa, Salt Lake City, peppercorn, rock salt, sea salt, salt tax, salt marsh, peppermint and 71 more...
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Homonyms That Are Antonyms
Got this idea from a Bizarro Cartoon. Let's find some others!
raise, raze, bate, bait, chilly, chile, complacent, complaisant, aweful, awful, reck, wreck and 8 more...
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Scrabble Countries
Country names which happen to be acceptable for play during a game of Scrabble.
china, japan, zaire, morocco, chile, brazil, chad, bolivia, cyprus, turkey, panama, jordan and 2 more...
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Capitonyms, capitonyms
Words that change meaning when capitalized
worms, welsh, turkey, time, tangier, tang, slough, seat, scotch, scone, said, russian and 70 more...
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Four Corners Names
Colorado Plateau mot(if)s: Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico
adobe, chelly, chile, chimayo, cimmaron, manzano, jemez, gilia, mogollon, nutrioso, otowi, pinon and 164 more...
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spoon
being items relating to food, cooking and the kitchen.
spoon, fork, beef, slice, dozen, eggs, simmer, broil, salad, soup, stock, lard and 287 more...
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food
food, chef, spice, salt, sugar, pumpkin, apples, fruit, vegetable, savory, soup, sauce and 280 more...
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Un zorro en Buenos Aires
virtual tour, frenetic, untable, chile, callao, gripe porcina, bonaerense, moflete, academy of st. ma..., sir neville marriner, brahms's first sy..., astor piazzola and 95 more...
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third rock from the sun
tectonic, magma, greenhouse, egypt, canada, united states, mexico, costa rica, greenland, iceland, luxembourg, ecuador and 89 more...
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aozuas's Words
sense data, hyperreality, brouhaha, ibid, apophenia, fnord, lackadaisical, schadenfreude, bildungsroman, ready-made, readymade, tergiversar and 654 more...
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In Penguin File
Black and white truths: species, characters, myths, habitats, lore.
fairy, emperor, adelie, chinstrap, headless, african, little, king, yellow-eyed, happy feet, erect-crested, pingoo and 42 more...
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a world of words
places in the world with interesting names
india, bombay, calcutta, persia, czechoslovakia, bahamas, bolivia, zimbabwe, vietnam, venezuela, chile, côte d'ivoire and 21 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for chile.
ruzuzu See Chile. Aug 9, 2010
sionnach Some of God's chillun might consider this to be a capitonym. Sep 2, 2009
rselby7 As represented by the 3rd example, the word should probably have a 3rd definition represented by something like the following:
n. -An elided version of the word “child”. A typical representation of dialect spoken by poor, Southern (USA) persons or un-educated persons of African descent prior to 1960. Jul 14, 2009
uselessness I'm hardly an expert on the matter. I am, quite frankly, an utter klutz in the kitchen.
My experience in New Mexico is that the word chile is used to mean both "chile peppers" and "green chile stew," depending on context. If you go to a restaurant here, you'll invariably be asked "Red or green?" Meaning, which color chile peppers do you want in your food? You can't have none at all in New Mexico. We eat chile peppers with everything. However, if you order "green chile" alone, you'll get the stew. Highly recommended, by the way.
It sounds to me that what you make is a stew, similar to what we have here. I wasn't aware that it was made like this outside of NM -- the only chili I knew prior to my move from Florida was the brown stuff. I doubt that your recipe, while it sounds delicious, would be accepted in a chili cook-off. I'm pretty sure those are just looking for the brown. We don't have those cook-offs in New Mexico, because they would probably just confuse a lot of people.
I have seen the cans of Hormel chili (brown stuff) in the grocery stores here, but nobody seems to touch them. Feb 18, 2007
chained_bear I'm taking the liberty of posting uselessness's comment from sionnach's list of soup words here, since it would seem to be hijacking the soup list to discuss chili vs. chile there:
uselessness: "Here in New Mexico, we don't know about "chili." We eat chile, which is a hearty stew made from (among other things) our indigenous spicy green chile peppers. Back east, where I'm actually from, we ate the more common brown stuff with beans, which is much less substantial. Comparatively speaking, I would describe chile as stew, and chili as soup."
Me again: I have been thinking (perhaps wrongfully) that chile is the name for the peppers, and chili the soup/stew that is made using them. I am familiar (who isn't?) with the "common brown stuff with beans," though that's not what I make at home. Though I don't live in New Mexico, the chili I make is much more stew-like, using lots of chiles, spices, etc. and is very dense and hardly liquidy at all. It may or may not contain beans (more often it does), but always contains tomato products. Would this count as a stew, then, or a soup? That is, is the salient characteristic its heritage (being made in the non-Southwestern U.S.), or whether it has beans (as I've heard some argue), or whether it is spelled chile or chili?
This topic was much in discussion at work this week, where we had a chili cook-off. (I didn't participate except as a judge.) Feb 18, 2007