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June 08, 2005
Council-house chic
Beautiful Atrocities offers a round-up of the Chav revolution.
chav, n., adj., UK slang, pejorative, similar to trailer trash, basura blanca, stupid proles, etc. AKA neds, wallys, hood rats, scallies, mall rats.
Of all the pop etymologies of the term I have heard, "acronym for council-house violent" is the worst. "Cheltenham average" was a favourite I picked up during my recent visit to England but that was down to a relative from Gloucester and he could have be expected to take a neutral view of these things. The best explanation suggests a Romany origin of the term.
The Times and several others consider chav to have come from nineteenth-century Romany language, either from chavi, meaning "male child" (chavo similarly meaning "female child", and chal meaning "boy"), or from chavvy, meaning "mate" or "friend" (usually in the sense of "fellow Roma", and hence used as a pejorative for all Roma by non-Roma). This etymology is supported by the existence of other words with associations to chav such as charva that can be similarly linked to Romany (compare charver, the Romany word for "prostitute").
Posted by Ghost of a flea at June 8, 2005 09:54 AM
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