Chav == "Cheltenham Average"
Discussion
Sad to hear my home town tarred as the birthplace of the word "Chav"
(Source: Telegraph)
Incidentally, if all the girls at Cheltenham Ladies College (or "greenfly" as we knew them) were laid end-to-end, then I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Telegraph said:
It is one of the etymological questions of the age: from where, exactly, do we get the word chav?
Now, at last, there is an answer.
Chav, as anyone not living on Mars for the last few months knows, is the buzzword of 2004 - a suitably monosyllabic noun or adjective designed to illuminate that which is most appalling in the young, designer-label-obsessed under-class of early 21st century Britain.
When you see a stunted teenager, apparently jobless, hanging around outside McDonald's dressed in a Burberry baseball cap, Ben Sherman shirt, ultra-white Reebok trainers and dripping in bling (cheap, tasteless and usually gold-coloured jewellery), he will almost certainly be a chav.
If he has difficulty framing the words "you gotta problem mate?" then he will definitely be a chav. Very short hair and souped-up Vauxhall Novas are chav, as is functional illiteracy, a burgeoning career in petty crime and the wearing of one's mobile telephone around the neck.
Chavs are most at home in run-down, small-town shopping precincts, smoking and shouting at their mates. A teenage single mum chewing gum or drawing on a cigarette as she pushes her baby, Keanu, to McDonald's to meet the chav she believes to be his father is a chavette.
So, who coined such a sneeringly useful term? Well, the pupils of Cheltenham Ladies College, apparently.
Rumour in the town has it that chav is derived from Cheltenham Average, the name given by the young ladies to the less-eligible young men of the town.
Rob Garnham, the mayor of Cheltenham, was less than pleased with the suggestion, pointing out that: "I am a Cheltenham Mr Average and I'm definitely not scum.'' He went on: "As someone who speaks for the people of the town, I'm sure we feel insulted by the term. People should come and see Cheltenham and realise what it's really like."
Vicky Tuck, principal of the 150-year-old college, was appalled by the suggestion that her girls, schooled so tirelessly in the need to respect other less favoured members of society, could have come up with such a derogatory label.
"It is offensive because it's deprecating one group of people against another," she said. "If we're trying to stand for anything here it's respecting all kinds of people living together in harmony. That's what I spend my waking hours trying to do.
"Social mobility comes primarily through education not wealth, and if more people believe we are a more class-ridden society then that's indicative, I think, of poverty of education."
Mrs Tuck believes chav derives from chavi, the 19th century Romany word for child.
(Source: Telegraph)
Incidentally, if all the girls at Cheltenham Ladies College (or "greenfly" as we knew them) were laid end-to-end, then I wouldn't be at all surprised.
The word and subject have been around for at least 8 years. It was used when I was at school and it refered to those who hailed from "Chaitham upon medway" or Chatem as the locals knew it.
Of course the chav wasnt restricted to Chatham and so anyone who resembled a Chatham native was refered to as a chav.
Of course the chav wasnt restricted to Chatham and so anyone who resembled a Chatham native was refered to as a chav.
Gassing Station | The Pie & Piston Archive | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff