Meanings
nounchillwave (uncountable)
- uncountableA genre of music of the late 2000s, characterized by effects processing, synthesizers, looping, sampling, and heavily filtered vocals with simple melodic lines.
As music created and shaped by the lens of blogs, music forums, and other forms of online comment, chillwave was subject to a backlash almost as soon as it had been labeled and defined.
2016, Sheila Whiteley, Shara Rambarran, editors, The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 418
Origin
From chill + -wave. Coined tongue-in-cheek on the blog Hipster Runoff in 2009.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
APA
chillwave. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chillwave
MLA
“chillwave.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chillwave. Accessed November 2, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “chillwave,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/chillwave.
Source: chillwave on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.