On Memorial Day many
people choose to chillax—a
portmanteau word formed from chill
and relax. Chillax is actually a bit
redundant, since chill, or sometimes chill out, first used in the 1970s, by
itself means to “calm down, relax, take it easy.”
The earliest citation of
chill in that sense, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary, is 1979,
in a hip-hop song called “Rapper’s Delight,” recorded by the Sugarhill Gang. A
whole gang of what must be writers is credited with those lyrics—including Sylvia Robinson, Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike, Master Gee, Bernard Edwards, Nile Rodgers, and Alan Hawkshaw, so it’s
impossible to know who actually came up with the line “A time to break and a
time to chill, To act civilized or act real ill.”
In 1983 Time Magazine
ran a piece that observed, “It’d be nice to just chill out all the time and hunt
and fish.”
By 1985, chill also meant to “hang out,” that is,
to “spend time in idleness or non-specific activity, especially with other
members of a group.”
A versatile word through
the ages, chill derives from Old
English ciele, which means “cold or
coolness.” In the 16th
century to chill meant to “lower the
spirits or to make sad,” and by the 18th century, it was used to
mean almost the opposite, to “quiver with excitement, to thrill.”
The Bard of Buffalo
Bayou is an old hand at chilling, especially when bottles and ice-chests are
involved.
A
hopped-up but happy hip-hopper
Took
a sight-seeing ride on a chopper,
But
while he was rapping,
The
pilot was napping,
Which
the hip-hopper thought was improper.
So
the hip-hopper summoned a copper,
Who
proved to be not a crime-stopper:
The
cop thought it amusing
That
the pilot was snoozing,
And
the chopper soon came a cropper.
Now
you may think this tale is a whopper,
But
I heard from a trusted eavesdropper
That
the pilot, the copper,
And
the hapless hip-hopper
All
met the fate of Big Bopper.
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