image credit: jose manchado
from the free dictionary:
Our Living Language In the 1980s and 1990s, chill gained currency as a slang term meaning "to relax, calm down." It is first recorded in 1979 and comes from Black English slang, which has frequently been a source of slang and informal words in Standard English, often through the medium of various African-American musical styles (in this case, rap and hip-hop). In fact, the word chill has had several incarnations as a slang term both inside and outside Black English. An older slang sense, recorded first in the 1870s, has been "to lose interest (in something), sour (on something)." Since the late 1920s it has also been used transitively to mean "to quash" and even "to kill." The recent use in the sense "to calm down" is another example of slang's innovativeness: English has always used words referring to heat and cold metaphorically to refer to emotions, and has used cool to refer to calmness since Old English times. Chill is a novel way of saying cool down, an old metaphor. The semantic evolution of chill continues as this is being written; the new sense of "to relax" has even more recently been extended to mean "to relax among friends, socialize." Chill thus offers a good example of how living languages are constantly changing in ways that are at once unpredictable and immediately comprehensible
there is a series of musical compilations that i love called "back to mine". it consists mostly of famous and semi-famous musicians who after a night at the club, take their cohorts back to their homes-"let's go back to mine" and play their favorite songs and musicians for their friends.
this style of music is mostly "chill" as it is usually put together after hours and after the club is closed and the party is winding down. this is where i first was introduced to the concept of chill in music and fell hard and fast for the genre. i believe there are actually 21 compilations available now and most of them have merit.
january 1, 2008 was a great day of chill for me. i didn't listen to that much music as i slept a good portion of the day. i got some other things done, but i think the most valuable was the chill portion. the part where i just didn't do anything other than be. god it felt good to do nothing.
2 comments:
Good for you! I think more people need to chill more often. That's what's on my agenda for this afternoon.
Robert McNeil of PBS' McNeil/Lehrer (now called the News Hour with James Lehrer) had a series on PBS about the English language. It imparted a tremendous love and respect for this language, because, unlike any other, the English language morphs and creates to fit changing times. While other languages evolve slowly, English is created and reconstructed spontaneously and from powerfully tiny sources. We have the word FAX, which is a discrete word that's supplanted FACSIMILE, and EMAIL, which has supplanted ELECTRONIC MAIL. But French, Spanish and other languages have to go through long phrases to convey the same meaning. The rapidity of change in English is unparalleled, and that's why so many American English words seep into other languages. The French even have a government board dedicated to preventing this leakage.
Sorry for the blah, blah, blah. You pushed my manic button.
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