Chile Is Neither Chili nor Chilly, and It Has Nothing to Do With Peppers
Ah, the confusion of reading “We ate some chile last night.” What, you like mud pies?
Chile, pronounced /chee-LAY/ by those who know, is a subtropical country in South America. Interestingly enough, it’s long and skinny, having the rough outline of a nice serrano pepper.
Chili, pronounced /CHI-lee/, is either a hot pepper, such as a habanero, serrano, or jalapeno, or it is a type of stew characterized by extreme spiciness and the use of beans. (Meat is optional, which is why the Mexicans call chili containing meat chili con carne, which means “chili with meat.”) The plural of this word is chilies, not chillies.
Chilly, also pronounced /CHI-lee/, means rather cold, as in “When the frost is on the pumpkin, the morning air is a bit chilly.”
So just remember that if you visit Chile, you will not get chilly, but you might be asked to eat a plate of chilies or a bowl of chili.
2 Comments
You’re the first Anglo to show people the correct way to pronounce Chile. Most of us Anglos mispronounce the name of the country to rhyme with the description of cold weather or the chili pepper. In my experience, only Hispanics seem even interested in pronouncing Chile correctly.
A POLITE NOTICE
As both a full-time writer and a chile-head, I feel honor-bound to correct you. The word chile does represent both the eponymous country and the fiery fruits. Nearly all usage manuals consider chili the only acceptable spelling for the “stew” eaten from a bowl. Ditto for chile as the correct spelling for the fruits themselves. Consider the newstand magazine Chile Pepper, and that long-standing periodical’s usage. Nowhere among 15 years of back-issues are the words chile and chili used interchangeably.
Now go out and pick some chiles and use them in your chili.