"Chill" Meaning "Inhibit or Discourage"

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:14 PM -0400 3/24/11, Jesse Sheidlower wrote:
>On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 12:09:37PM -0400, Shapiro, Fred wrote:
>>  Jesse,
>>
>>  Does the OED have any kind of draft entry for _chill_ 'inhibit or
>>  discourage' or for the relating term _chilling effect_? What are the
>>  OED's earliest citations for these?
>
>We seem not to have drafted either of these yet. I've put them on the
>list.
>
How different is that from the standard "chill" listed as sense 5 of
the verb entry glossed as (fig.) 'To affect as with cold; to check,
depress, or lower (warmth, ardour, etc.); to damp, deject, dispirit'?

There's also the slang positive verb:

[addition] 4a. Freq. with out. To calm down, relax, take it easy.
Also as int. phr. slang. (orig. U.S.)

as first attested in this nice riff on Ecclesiastes:

1979    S. Robinson et al. Rapper's Delight (song) in L. A. Stanley
Rap: The Lyrics (1992) 325   There's a time to laugh, a time to cry A
time to live, and a time to die A time to break and a time to chill
To act civilized or act real ill.

--where "chill"" is essentially the inchoative of slang "cool", whose
flavor it retains.

LH
.

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