Origin of "chav"
eromlignod
wondering if anyone cared to speculate as to the origin of the term
"chav" beyond what was offered in the article. It is a new word to me.
Don
Kansas City
At Wit's End, a Town Dithers Over Its Millionaire Pest
SWAFFHAM, England - Except possibly for Howard Carter, who discovered
Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922 (and who died a long time ago), 22-year-old
Michael Carroll is by far Swaffham's most famous resident.
Michael Carroll won £9.7 million in the national lottery three years
ago. Since then, he has appeared in court more than 30 times.
Mr. Carroll has given Swaffham fits since he won the lottery. Ordered
to clean up the tires and debris in his yard, he offered to buy the
town Christmas lights, an offer that officials have rejected.
Known across Britain by his tabloid nickname, the Lotto Lout, Mr.
Carroll won £9.7 million (about $15 million at the time) in the
national lottery three years ago and showed up to collect his prize
while wearing a police-issued electronic ankle bracelet. The question
now raging in Swaffham is whether he deserves to throw the switch at
the town's annual Christmas lights display, as he was briefly invited
to do.
"I personally have nothing against him," said Terry Drake, a prominent
local businessman who owns a hardware store on the main street of this
busy old market town. "But a convicted criminal shouldn't be in a
position to do something that children are supposed to look up to."
At this point, Mr. Carroll is not likely to be turning on anyone's
lights except his own. After a huge public outcry, the town has
rescinded the invitation and will probably have no holiday display at
all this year (Mr. Carroll was going to pay for it).
If nothing else, Mr. Carroll, who did not respond to messages left at
his house, has proved since winning that he is not the sort of person
to let money turn his head: he has kept having run-ins with the
authorities, the only difference being that he now drives nicer cars to
court.
"Before he won the lottery, he was a nuisance," Charles Joyce, a local
official, said. "He decided to carry on being a nuisance."
Among other things, he has appeared in court more than 30 times in the
last three years. He has spent three months in jail on drugs charges,
paid thousands of dollars in fines for vandalism and been evicted from
several hotels after, for instance, ripping a chandelier from the
ceiling while trying to swing from it.
He was recently ordered to perform 240 hours of community service -
later increased to 300 - after shooting ball bearings through 32 car
and shop windows with a catapult as he drove around in the middle of
the night.
He has been issued with two antisocial behavior orders in two local
jurisdictions forbidding him to threaten, harass or intimidate anyone
in a 400-mile radius. He has been told by local government authorities
to stop throwing raucous late-night parties and to stop holding
demolition derbies on his land.
And he has been told to clean up the yard of his house, strewn as it is
with tires, beer cans, food wrappers, wrecked furniture and the hulks
of half-smashed-up old cars.
Mr. Carroll is an object of national fascination in part because of his
apparently pathological criminality, and in part because he represents
a kind of Briton known as a chav. Chavs, whether rich or poor, tend to
favor gaudy jewelry and expensive-but-tacky clothes with big logos and
to behave in a way that others find coarse or obnoxious.
Male chavs wear tracksuits and baseball caps; female chavs pull their
hair tightly back in buns or ponytails, a style known as a "council
house facelift," from the term for public housing.
Mr. Carroll has "King of Chavs" printed on his Mercedes, a car known in
the newspapers as the Loutmobile (its license plate reads L111 OUT).
The derivation of the word chav, which began to be widely used about a
year ago as the problem of binge drinking in Britain's towns and cities
became a huge national issue, is murky. Some say it comes from an 18th
century Romany word meaning "child"; others believe it may come from
the town of Chatham in Kent, known, apparently, for its large chav
population (the theory that it is an acronym for Council Housed and
Violent is most likely untrue).
Chav behavior - outrageous spending sprees, drunken brawls,
inappropriate public displays of affection, screaming matches with
loved ones in bars, destruction of property, late-night stumbling
and/or vomiting - provide celebrity magazines here with much of their
material. Among British women, Coleen McLoughlin, the girlfriend of the
soccer star Wayne Rooney, is seen as a celebrity chav.
Ms. McLoughlin - whose new house with Mr. Rooney reportedly includes
its own spray-tanning booth - is rarely photographed without a variety
of designer-store shopping bags and a thong showing above her pants.
Her 18th birthday party last year descended into chaos when the free
drinks ran out and Mr. Rooney's uncle began yelling abuse at the
waiters.
Others in the greater chav universe are David and Victoria Beckham, who
would hate to be considered chavs but who nonetheless wore matching
purple outfits and sat on matching thrones at their wedding; and
Jordan, a former topless model who recently traveled to her own wedding
in a Cinderella-style carriage shaped like a pumpkin and pulled by six
white horses.
Mr. Carroll, who collects chav products like jewelry, cars and tattoos,
has also experienced the underside of famous chavdom, with friends
denouncing him publicly. His now ex-girlfriend told The Sun that Mr.
Carroll believed that "the trees in his front garden are actually
people disguised as trees," and spent his nights prowling around the
house looking for intruders. "I'll tell him, 'Come back to bed, you
stupid twit,' " she told the newspaper.
The Christmas lights offer came from Swaffham's honorary town crier,
Eddie Godden, who is responsible for organizing the display this year.
But after receiving letters of protest from across the country, the
council not only decreed that Mr. Carroll was to go nowhere near the
display (if there is one) but also removed Mr. Godden from his post.
"He has misbehaved, but he's done what most teenaged boys would do in
winning that sort of money," Mr. Godden said of Mr. Carroll. "He's 22
and he's had a lot of bad publicity and he's already been to prison.
This is the first conscious public thing he's done to give some money
to a good cause. I think he was ready to make amends."
Is he ready to make amends? Mr. Carroll's lawyer, Neil Meacham, would
not say.
"I get so many calls from television and the newspapers that unless you
pay me, I really don't have time to talk to you," Mr. Meacham said in a
brief interview. But he allowed that Mr. Carroll was "vigorously
contesting" many of the outstanding charges against him.
Mr. Carroll recently participated in a charity boxing match with a
television gladiator named Rhino, but Mr. Meacham declined to comment
on the latest rumor: that his client is negotiating to star in a
reality television series about the chav lifestyle.
"The only thing that is certain in life is uncertainty," Mr. Meacham
said, and hung up the telephone.
retrosorter
believe the word comes from the name of the town of Chatham in Kent,
where the term is best known and probably originated. The word,
however, probably derive from a much older underclass, the gypsies,
many of whom have lived in that area for generations. Chav likely
derives from the Romany word for a child, chavi, recorded from the
middle of the 19th century.
Ross Howard
wrought:
>I just read the following piece in today's New York Times and was
>wondering if anyone cared to speculate as to the origin of the term
>"chav" beyond what was offered in the article. It is a new word to me.
[...]
[QUOTE ARTICLE]
>The derivation of the word chav, which began to be widely used about a
>year ago as the problem of binge drinking in Britain's towns and cities
>became a huge national issue, is murky. Some say it comes from an 18th
>century Romany word meaning "child"; others believe it may come from
>the town of Chatham in Kent, known, apparently, for its large chav
>population (the theory that it is an acronym for Council Housed and
>Violent is most likely untrue).
[END QUOTE]
It's not just an 18th-century [wot, no hyphen, NYT copy desk?] Romany
word; *chavea* (child) is current gypsy Spanish, and a word derived
from it -- *chaval(a)* (youth/kid) -- is very common in contemporary
colloquial Spanish.
That Kent theory seems rather unlikely to me, largely because the
current UK use of "chav" appears to have spread out from the North
East, which is at the other end of the country from Chatham.
An important piece of the puzzle remains missing, though: there is no
particularly significant Romany population in the Newcastle area, so
why would Geordies have chosen to adapt a gypsy word in the first
place?
--
Ross Howard
Roger
My understading is that, as suggested in the article, it stands for
"Council House and Dangerous". Presumably, the snobs who invented the
term have never lived on a council estate, because if they had they
would recognise that most council tenants are respectable and
law-abiding people. But Britain has always been a class-torn society
with the over-privileged despising the hard-working poor who provide
most of the goods and services they consume.
Roger
Roger
John Dean
Quite a few Romany words have entered the national vocab over the years
(bosh. mush, nark, yack). Probably because Romanies are travellers and
therefore spread their influence all over the country. Plus the use of
Romany terms in Palari. Not that I'm convinced it spread from the North
East. It was being heard in the South East some years ago. The big media
discovery of the term was more recent and, when the media chanced upon
it, they found it in use in the North and enquired no further.
I rather prefer the idea that it came from "charver" aka "charva" aka
"chava" a Romany word used to describe sexual intercourse or to
interfere with another's business. One who chavas is a chav.
Of course, "chavel" is an old verb meaning to chatter or talk idly.
And "chavish", per OED, was used thusly:
"1674 Ray S. & E.C. Words 61 A Chavish, a chatting or pratling noise
among a great many, Sussex. 1868 Ch. News 25 Nov., Hearing the morning
'chavish' of the birds. 1875 Parish Sussex Dial., Chavish, a chattering
or prattling noise of many persons speaking together. A noise made by a
flock of birds. "
So a back formation from chavish to chav is not, surely, out of the
question?
--
John Dean
Oxford
Will
Here in Cheltenham we claim to have invented the term - it stands for
"CHeltenham AVerage", though conceivably it could as easily stand for
"CHatham AVerage".
Will.
Donna Richoux
> My understading is that, as suggested in the article, it stands for
> "Council House and Dangerous".
But that doesn't even spell. Chad is too, too 2000.
The article said:
> the theory that it is an acronym for Council Housed and
> Violent is most likely untrue
I will add that to my "False Acronyms" list.
--
Best wishes -- Donna Richoux
Mike Lyle
[...]
> Here in Cheltenham we claim to have invented the term - it stands
for
> "CHeltenham AVerage", though conceivably it could as easily stand
for
> "CHatham AVerage".
With the pellet-hole in my sitting-room window, and the beer cans in
the nearby children's playground, also here in Cheltenham, I'm ready
to pretend I believe it.
--
Mike.
Jim Lawton
>I just read the following piece in today's New York Times and was
>wondering if anyone cared to speculate as to the origin of the term
>"chav" beyond what was offered in the article. It is a new word to me.
>
See this previous discussion in this group http://tinyurl.com/8uuph
--
Jim
the polymoth
Mark Brader
> jurisdictions forbidding him to threaten, harass or intimidate anyone
Where'd they get 400 miles from? I make it that that includes all
of England, all of Wales, all of Northern Ireland, and about half of
Scotland.
--
Mark Brader, Toronto | "Don't let it drive you crazy...
m...@vex.net | Leave the driving to us!" --Wayne & Shuster
Peter Duncanson
>
>My understading is that, as suggested in the article, it stands for
>"Council House and Dangerous".
Wouldn't that have to be "Council House and Violent", or some other
V-word?
--
Peter Duncanson
UK (posting from a.u.e)
Paul Draper
"Ross Howard" <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:lkuqj11gqcrpf3q4m...@4ax.com...
> On 30 Sep 2005 10:44:35 -0700, "eromlignod" <eroml...@aol.com>
[QUOTE ARTICLE]
>
> That Kent theory seems rather unlikely to me, largely because the
> current UK use of "chav" appears to have spread out from the North
> East, which is at the other end of the country from Chatham.
>
> An important piece of the puzzle remains missing, though: there is no
> particularly significant Romany population in the Newcastle area, so
> why would Geordies have chosen to adapt a gypsy word in the first
> place?
>
But there is a significant Romany ppoulation is Kent and prior to the use of
'chav' the same people were being referred to as 'pikeys' which is a
degoratory term for Travellers and Romanies.
Will
Only beer cans? The last children's playground I went through had a
burning car in it.
Will.
Mike Lyle
Well, this one did briefly sport an Astra crashed head-first into a
tree; but they hadn't set fire to it before the Police took it away.
--
Mike.