Wondering about something in light of recent posts by Balasubramani and Baude: what's the difference between chili, chile, chilli, and chilly? The OED lists chili and chile as variants of chilli, from the Nahuatl -- although I suspect this preference for chilli is a sign of the OED's Britishism. The fourth variant isn't even listed, even though I've seen it all over the place in the context of Indian or Thai food.
I'd be interested to hear how others use these words. In my own personal universe of usage, chili refers to the dish Will made last week (along with the beany varieties -- apologies to Will's girlfriend), and chile is the many varieties of fresh or dried pods you use in Mexican and Southwestern cuisine (also used to make chili); I make no distinction betweem chilli and chilly, but I think of them as being largely the same thing as chile, except in an Indian or East Asian context (ie you can't make chili with chilly or even chilli). Anyway, it's amusing that we throw around all these cuisine-specific variants even though the referents all have the same (agri)cultural provenance.
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