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Chile

Syllabification: (Chil·e)
Pronunciation: /ˈCHilē/
Translate Chile | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of Chile
  • a country in South America that occupies a long coastal strip that runs down the western coast of Bolivia and Argentina, on the Pacific Ocean; population 16,601,700 (est. 2009); capital, Santiago; official language, Spanish.

Most of Chile was part of the Inca empire and became part of Spanish Peru after Pizarro’s conquest. Independence was achieved in 1818 with help from Argentina. After the overthrow of the Marxist democrat Salvador Allende in 1973, Chile was ruled by the right-wing military dictatorship of General Pinochet until a democratically elected president took office in 1990

Derivatives

Chilean

adjective & noun

Chile in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of Chile in the British & World English dictionary
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