chav 2004, A Word a Year: 1904-2004

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Chav (/ˈtʃæv/ CHAV) is a pejorative epithet used in Britain to describe a particular stereotype. The word was popularised in the first decade of the 21st century by the British mass media to refer to an anti-social youth subculture in the United Kingdom.

Chav - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

卡洛成為英國茶餘飯後人物，部分來自他的病態犯罪行為，部分來自他是英國人眼中「低俗的痞子」（chav）。這類人無論貧富，都喜歡配戴大型珠寶和昂貴又有明顯標誌的衣服，不僅衣著俗到斃，行為也很粗鄙惹人厭。

chav 

Pronunciation: /tʃav/ 

NOUN

British informal, derogatory

A young lower-class person typified by brash and loutish behaviour.

Example sentences

Derivatives

chavvy

ADJECTIVE

Example sentences

Origin

1990s: probably from Romany chavo 'boy, youth' or chavvy 'baby, child': sometimes said to have originated in Chatham, Kent, and to be a shortening of that name.

More

• Baseball cap, fake designer sportswear, cheap jewellery—that is the uniform of the chav, a loutish, obnoxious youth who barged his way into the British consciousness in 2004. Popularized by websites and the tabloid press, the term caught on quickly, and soon women and older people too were being described as chavs. New words appear all the time, but chav caused great excitement to word scholars when it came on the scene. It seems to have been popular around Chatham in Kent during the late 1990s, and some people think that it is an abbreviation of the town's name, while others suggest it comes from the initial letters of ‘Council House And Violent’. The most plausible suggestion is that it is from the Romany word chavi or chavo, ‘boy, youth’. The related dialect word chavvy ‘boy, child’ was used in the 19th century and is still occasionally in use. The northeast variant of chav, charver, has been around since at least the 1960s, and chav can mean ‘mate, pal’ in Scots dialect. Chav was probably knocking around as an underground expression for a long time before it was taken up as a new way of insulting people.

A Word a Year: 1904-2004

Very few words are coined in isolation. Each neologism holds a clue, however faint, of the time in which it was created. The following choice of a single word from each of the last hundred years is inevitably subjective, since hundreds of new words are being created at any one time. Nonetheless, collectively these words give a distinct picture of the shifting preoccupations of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. The dates of CHEESEBURGER or MOBILE PHONE may surprise.

1904 hip 1905 whizzo 1906 teddy bear 1907 egghead 1908 realpolitik 1909 tiddly-om-pom-pom 1910 sacred cow 1911 gene 1912 blues 1913 celeb 1914 cheerio 1915 civvy street 1916 U-boat 1917 tailspin 1918 ceasefire 1919 ad-lib 1920 demob 1921 pop 1922 wizard 1923 hem-line 1924 lumpenproletariat 1925 avant garde 1926 kitsch 1927 sudden death 1928 Big Apple 1929 sex 1930 drive-in 1931 Mickey Mouse 1932 bagel 1933 dumb down 1934 pesticide 1935 racism 1936 spliff

1937 dunk 1938 cheeseburger 1939 Blitzkrieg 1940 Molotov cocktail  1941 snafu 1942 buzz 1943 pissed off 1944 DNA 1945 mobile phone 1946 megabucks 1947 Wonderbra 1948 cool 1949 Big Brother 1950 brainwashing 1951 fast food 1952 Generation X 1953 hippy 1954 non-U 1955 boogie 1956 sexy 1957 psychedelic 1958 beatnik 1959 cruise missile 1960 cyborg 1961 awesome 1962 bossa nova 1963 peacenik 1964 byte 1965 miniskirt 1966 acid 1967 love-in 1968 It-girl 1969 microchip 1970 hypermarket

1971 green 1972 Watergate 1973 F-word 1974 punk 1975 detox 1976 Trekkie 1977 naff all 1978 trainers 1979 karaoke 1980 power dressing 1981 toy-boy 1982 hip-hop 1983 beatbox 1984 double-click 1985 OK yah 1986 mobile 1987 virtual reality 1988 gangsta 1989 latte 1990 applet 1991 hot-desking 1992 URL 1993 have it large 1994 Botox 1995 kitten heels 1996 ghetto fabulous 1997 dot-commer 1998 text message 1999 google 2000 bling bling 2001 9/11 2002 axis of evil 2003 sex up 2004 chav