chav

[ chav ]

/ tʃæv /

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noun Chiefly British Slang: Disparaging and Offensive.

a young person who wears fashionable sportswear or flashy jewelry but is regarded as badly behaved or as having lower-class taste.

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Origin of chav

First recorded in 1995–2000; perhaps shortening of British slang chavvy “baby, child,” or from Romani chavo “(Romani) boy, youth, unmarried man” or Romani chavi “baby, child,” probably from unrecorded Middle Indic chāva, chāpa “young of an animal,” from Sanskrit śāva

OTHER WORDS FROM chav

chav·ish, chav·vy, adjective

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

How to use chav in a sentence

He will come back, murmured Chavvy, in concordance with her leitmotif.
Twos and Threes|G. B. Stern
I decided it would be quite nice if Chavvy and I came to live with Esther.
Twos and Threes|G. B. Stern
And when this child Chavvy crept into my life, I let her remain, to fill the gap my daughter might have filled.
Twos and Threes|G. B. Stern
A weird child, yet with something strangely attractive about her, would have been Chavvy as visualized by Chavvy.
Twos and Threes|G. B. Stern

He turned to his own matrimonial aspects: Chavvy will be perfectly happy with you and Esther, I suppose.
Twos and Threes|G. B. Stern

British Dictionary definitions for chav

chav

/ (tʃæv) /

noun

Southern English informal, derogatory a young working-class person whose tastes, although sometimes expensive, are considered vulgar by some

Derived forms of chav

chavish, adjective

Word Origin for chav

perhaps from Romany chavi a child

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012