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Jun 4, 2025
This week’s themeWords with movie connections This week’s words Keystone cop big chill bunny boiler ![]() ![]() Poster: Columbia Pictures / Wikimedia
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with Anu Gargbig chill
PRONUNCIATION:
MEANING:
noun: 1. An extremely cold spell. 2. A prolonged period of global cooling or glaciation. 3. A state of emotional letdown, disillusionment, or waning enthusiasm. 4. A metaphor for death or the end of life. ETYMOLOGY:
From big, perhaps of Scandinavian origin + chill, from Old English cele
(coolness). Sense 3 was influenced by the 1983 film The Big Chill in
which former college idealists reunite and confront their disappointments.
Earliest documented use: 1911.
USAGE:
“[In the film The Day After Tomorrow] there is snow in Delhi and
Tokyo is pummelled by hailstones the size of fists. The big chill is
a mystery to everybody but Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid), a climatologist
in Washington, DC, who moonlights as a soothsayer.” Anthony Lane; Cold Comfort; The New Yorker; Jun 7, 2004. “The Albanese government is facing the big chill on many fronts.” Tom Dusevic; Challenges of Economic Reality; The Australian (Canberra, Australia); May 23, 2022. “So right before they put you to permanent sleep, the big chill.” Maxwell Perry; The Big Truck War; AuthorHouse; 2008. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on
fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life
is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the
throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs
to learn the difference. -Robert Fulghum, author (b. 4 Jun 1937)
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