in comb. [Various parts of speech.]
† 1. Chill-cold [either ‘as cold as chill,’ like ice-cold, stone-cold; or, as sometimes found, chilled-cold, like burnt black].
a. adj., also chilled-cold, completely chilled, thoroughly cold.
1565. Golding, Ovid’s Met., V. (1593), 125. A chil-cold swet my sieged limmes opprest.
1591. Nashe, Introd. Sidney’s Astr. & Stella. The earth … snatcht thee too soone into her chilled colde armes.
1594. Marlow, Dido, II. i. 263. Dipped it in the old King’s chill-cold blood.
1601. Dounfall Earl of Huntington, II. i. Hazl., Dodsley, VIII. 126. Friendship, honesty, Are chill-cold, dead with cold.
1611. Barksted, Hiren (1876), 74. Tendring their spotlesse vows, in child-cold dew, Of virgin teares.
1612. J. Davies, Muse’s Sacrif., 49 (D.). A chill-cold Bloud … Fleets through my veines.
b. sb. Chill coldness.
1693. W. Robertson, Phraseol. Gen., 343. A chill-cold, algor.
2. Chill-hardening (see quot.); chill-plough, a plow having a share ‘chilled’ on the under surface: see CHILLED 2; chill-room, a room for chilling or refrigerating meat, etc.
1874. Knight, Dict. Mech., Chill-hardening, a mode of tempering steel-cutting instruments, by exposing the red-hot metal to a blast of cold air.
1884. G. Pomeroy Keese, in Harper’s Mag., July, 298/1. The animal is hung up, ‘drawn and quartered,’ and then left to cool in the chill-room for forty-eight hours preparatory to shipping.
1886. York Herald, 23 Aug., 6/4. There are several imitations of the original American chill plow in the market.
