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Chav
Professor David Crystal
Chav. It came to the fore as a word in 2005 really, I didn't
remember hearing it much before that. It refers to a type
of youth, supposedly uncultured, maybe a bit anti-social,
perhaps even violent, but certainly marked out, at least
from the point of view of the critic, by very bad taste.
Chavs are supposed to wear a lot of flashy jewellery, white
trainers, baseball caps, sham designer clothes, girls expose
a lot of mid-rift & nothing racial about it all, I should say.
Now, whether it's cool or not to be a chav, I couldn't say,
at least, not at my age! I find the linguistics much more
interesting. It's a problem though, the linguistics. Where
does the word come from? It's been around since the 19th
century. Lexicographer Eric Partridge mentions it in his
huge dictionary of slang and unconventional English. He
talks about it coming from Romany (the language of the
gypsies), 'chavy' - a child, or 'chaval' - a boy. And then later it was used
for 'men' as well.
But nobody knows who's reactivated it in recent times. It's a noun, 'a
chav', 'chavs', and also an adjective - people talk about 'chav behaviour'
or 'chav insults' and that sort of thing. O, don't believe the popular
etymologies that you read sometimes in the press and on websites & I
saw one the other day, people said, 'It's an acronym, 'chav', from council
house and violent' - well, no, it isn't, that was made up in recent times.
Appealing as these etymologies are, they're nothing to do with the real
Romany history of this very interesting word.
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