And there I was thinking that Sidcup was quite genteel .....

C'mon Lester, this is clearly a forgery. No-one (from anywhere, let alone Sidcup) could be so stupid as to come out with that stream of gibberish and be able to use email and a PC. Surely?

Does this paltry attempt at Kentish bad-mouthing stem from the whole Essex-Kent rivalry thing?

I must state my own bias here - I was born in Tunbridge Wells, dontcha'know.

"kushti mushti cacker manky currer bow" - this is the only bit I had trouble translating from that Sidcup CHAV (please denote, CHAV is in capitals as it is an acronym).

Chav an acronym? That's a new one for me. I thought the etymology was not definitive but that most people agree that it comes from a merging of various slang and Romany terms.

@Jonathan Stowe: hardly. Like nearby Bexleyheath, hardly areas I would choose to live nowadays...

I used to work on a Helpdesk for a rather large Cable ISP in Sidcup. I bet it was one of the management team who wrote that!

A shining example of pure frontier gibberish. Thanks for sharing!

Council Housed Aggressive Violent.

Originally police slang.

...when someone gives amanfrommars access to lager.

CHAV = Council House And Violent

....as indeed would seem to be the case from the email.

I was alway led to believe that Chav was Chatham abbreviated, the Kent locals couldn't cope with words longer than 4 letters so abbreviated Chatham to Chav, such as "you gaan dahn Chav".

Doesn't come from Chatham, oop North it's charva, and no-one has even heard of Chatham

The "Council Housed and Violent" derivation for chav has been batted around the Internet a bit, but there's no confirmation that it's at all true. Unless you know any cops who can confirm it and date it first hand? As far as what can be found on the Internet is concerned, equally likely is a derivation from the Romany "chavi" ("chava" and variations). Or some other equally inventive etymological origin.

Personally I favour the Romany one since, a while before I heard the term "chav" in common use, some of the guys I knew around Newcastle used to use the word "charver" to describe such people. That would probably have been around 2001-2002, but I don't know whether they had picked up the word "chav" from somewhere and extended it or whether the word "charver" was in use first and then shortened to "chav". (I would suspect the latter, but I'm no linguist so I don't know whether contractions are more common than extensions when languages and words evolve.)

OK, I know, getting boring now, but I can't get me coat yet, I'm still wearing me Santa suit. (Just don't ask...)

Chavi is Romany for child; cushtie their word for good; cory for the male member - although you now have to append Doctorow to that to denote a proper cock.

"No-one (from anywhere, let alone Sidcup) could be so stupid as to come out with that stream of gibberish and be able to use email and a PC. Surely?"

You've obviously never read YouTube comments

'Chav' would seem to be a word derived from Roma, and 'CHAV' is one of those stupid acronyms that get made-up and tacked on after-the-fact...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav#Etymology

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chav

http://www.oup.com/elt/catalogue/teachersites/oald7/wotm/wotm_archive/chav?cc=gb

My wife (who's a Geordie) recalls a mother of her friend referring to little kids as 'charvers' back in the late 1980s - it's not a new word, but the meaning has changed in recent years to refer to the no-good scuffers that we all know and love.

SC

Everyone calls em chavs now for some reason. The media seem to love the word. Problem is, round here they used to be townies. Anc scruffs. And mostly just wankers in hats. This "chav" thing annoys me.

Nobody knows where the chav came from but I've developed a theory. They're actually a fungus. A highly mobile and aggressive fungus, but a fungus nontheless. The first clue came from those puffer jackets they used to wear in the 90s though, apparently, evolution has made them less obvious now. Anyway, these puffer jacketed townies are the mobile adult stage, and usually one will travel to a new area, sit down and then explode overnight. The next morning all you'll be able to find are filter papers, manky looking socks and emtpy cans od cheap cider littering the area. These are the fungal spores, and new townywankers will grow out of them. Once an area is infested with these spores the fungus is almost impossible to eradicate, and even if it appears to have been driven out it's usually left behind enough spores to rise again, as if from nowhere.

Several species have been identified. The "classic", or Original Townie of the mid-90s, or Lycoperdum nylumpolis, wearing bright nylon tracksuits, puffer jackets and peaked caps with the middle pushed in so it sits right on top of the shaved head; the "Burbury breasted chav" or Lycoperdum pledipolis, and it's subspecies the Essex Burburry, Lycoperdum Pledovalis; and the Common Hooded, or "Hoodie", Lycoperdum fibrocolilpolis. There are probably many more species out there. The fungus is highly adaptive and evolves very rapidly.

The only known treatment is a swift whack on the "head" with a stick, which kills the fungus without releasing its spores. They can also be temporarily immobilised by liberal application of alcohol in solution with lemonade.

Yeah, it seems to be a case of backwards abbreviation; it didn't mean "Council House and Violent", it's just someone came up with that having heard "chav" and thinking it'd be funny.

Much like here in Scotland a somewhat-equivalent term (ned) has been used for many years to describe the neer-do-wells that litter the urban landscape like so much squidgy dogshit, societal offspring to Maggie's "screw-the-scots-close-the-shipyards-give-em-poll-tax" policies.

Urban legend has it that Ned comes from "Non-Educated Delinquent", which whilst highly appropriate and almost always true, is sadly not the case. Most evidence points to it originating from the 'teddy-boys' of the 1950's.

Regardless, they're all scum!

"Charva"?? I'm oop north and I've never heard that. 'Tis "chav" round here.

Either that or "tosser."

I'm not supposed to talk about it, and It never made the final list, but the rule that started RegClub states...

"Thou shalt not quote Wikipedia and expect to be taken seriously."

B.

If they find out you are talking about them, they will invade this site with rambling abusive "text speak" comments about your mothers and how they will cut your eyes off if they ever see you in the street....

This is a bit of a sore point with a few people!

I've been around a bit (ooh er) and have heard a load of names for those of the chav persuasion:

Schemies (Glasgow or Edinburgh)

Scallies (Liverpool)

Chav

Ned

On an unrelated side note i also heard that divvie was originally used to describe the inmates in a prison who were so stupid the only job they were given was to put the dividers in the files...

Biut not sure how true that is!

Does anyone else have any other words for chav?

What purports to be a message looks like the crud that spammers put on to defeat the Bayesian filters.

I can definitely state that here in Newcastle area, we've been saying charver since at least the early nineties - chav was new to us much later. We always understood it to be a contraction of "chart raver" referring to the hordes of pilled up scallies that invaded the rave scene and spoiled it for everyone else.

I choose the smiley due to the obvious drug culture reference.

iphones have email so they don't need to use a pc

Personally, the word Chav will always be associated with romanies or to give them the local Kentish name, Pikies, chav usually means kid or matey in their slang/dialect... But where's the Paris angle???

I pointed out I was referring to the Acronym version due to the nature of the article, but it is just one of those words that has been bastardised for modern times.

The first time I'd heard the term 'Chav' was in 1995 when I joined university. Two of my friends from Kent. The meaning was the same, and it was shortened from 'Chavver'. They used to talk about the 'Chavvers from Faversham'. No-one could say where the name came from, but I think it had been in common usage in kent for at least 5 years before it found it's way onto the internet.

Scallies is what they're called in manchester, as for acronyms of Chav, not very plausible. About as plausible as 'posh' being an acronym.

I went to a school in Sidcup called Kemnal Technology College, formerly Kemnal Manor. There are a number of Romani gypsie camps nearby (specically in an area called the Crays) whose male kids were often sent to my school. I was there from '94 to '99 and have distinct memories as early as '94 of them calling each other (presumably affectionately) Chavi. Thus those of us who had no idea what they were saying (and were either brave or stupid) used to call them Chav's. I'm convinced this word entered popular culture from my school, or certainly the Sidcup area, but could be completely wrong.

I'm certainly glad to be out of that area now, from what I have heard it has gone terribly down hill since then!

...in the mid/late 80's we used to call them "Bedmies" as they hung round the dodgy shops in Bedminster, wearing burgandy trousers.

"Charva" was used by all sorts in Newcastle in the late-80's, including my then-girlfriends grandma, who wouldn't have known what a rave was (especially not a charty one).

I believe I know which Cable ISP you worked for as I too worked for them last year. I do wonder who in management you think may have written the gibberish...

From what I can remember from the 60's in St. Helens. Divvies were called divvies because they were like the Co-op Dividend. i.e. Not the full pound.

:-)

I grew up in Gravesend, North Kent in the 59s/60s and the term chav, chavi, cushtie and cory were all in common usage. As said earlier cushtie means good. Cory was often used as 'cory cream' referring to ejaculatory emissions. Chav or chavi was a mate but could be used as a term of minor abuse.

We all picked up these phrases from circus and fair workers who came through regularly. As did lucky heather and clothes pegs sellers...

There was an irreverent comic strip out some years back which summed up the situation rather too well for some. If the link below doesn't work you can find it on Flikr - tags: gypsy cartoon comic strip

http://www.flickr.com/photos/53396935@N00/2076508210/

When I lived down Cheshire way, around the suburbs of the suburbs of Manchester, "Townies" was a term for the teenage children of the wealthy who would spend all of their time wearing ugly but expensive clothing and pointlessly hanging around the town lying about how much beer they had 'necked' (in reality, almost none, since they were almost universally to stupid to produce or procure fake ID).

We called the unrepentantly nasty and violent scum "Scallies", which is Manchester proper terminology, and doesn't necessarily involve a shell suit. There was some crossover between the two, Cheshire being such a hotbed of social climbing, and not always in the upward direction. I spent many a fond Friday evening kicking these fuckwads out of my pub and into the car park, there to be administered a suitable kicking before being summarily bundled into the handily parked black mariah that used to frequent our car park. Ah Cheshire, how I miss your random pointless violence and criminally negligent police force.

Later (mid 90s) I moved to Newcastle, and discovered the term "Charver", which almost always involves a shell suit, cap, Elizabeth Duke at Argos bling, poor social skills, and teenage pregnancy. There is a guide to charvers, similar to the above mentioned sites at : http://www.newcastlestuff.com/charver/index.html

I would argue that at the time, the two were distinct, but they seem to have merged into one large and unpleasant subculture. If that weren't the case, Jeremy Kyle would have no audience.

Cattle prods and Landrovers, it's the only way.

You boys are beginning to make us Texian rednecks look suave and sophisticated ;-)

"iphones have email so they don't need to use a pc"

but wouldn't their clubbed chav fingers fail to operate that UI correctly?

surely they would need to wield their mallets on a ruggedised PC keyboard?

I'm a policeman officer. Born in Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup incidentally.

I can't support the 'Council House And Violent' etymology. I'd never heard that derivation prior to the word 'Chav' coming into popular use, nor has any colleague I've discussed it with.

And no, I can't let you off that speeding ticket.

I was born in "Royal Tunbridge Wells".. well actually like everyone else from the area Pembury. Unless you were born on some doorstep which is frightfully common.

I have heard some shocking examples of english from the Youf element of twells and local boroughs such as Maidstone (such a classy place) and north Kent.

I don't think it matters where you come from anymore, lower class plebs are lower class plebs. ironically the worst of them tend to be the ones that come from minted families.

AIUI, "Pikey" and "Roma" are quite distinct terms.

Roma are the "traditional" gypsies with the multiple gold earrings who go around on horses, live in painted wooden caravans put curses on people in Steven King novels.

Pikeys are the (originally) Irish "tinkers" with the multiple gold signet rings who go around in top-of-the-range Beemers, live in plastic caravans and claim benefits.

I rely mostly on the film "Snatch" for my description of the latter.

Well, maybe if they were wearing black shorts.

Those are the Aussie terms, although we havent yet developed bogans to the level of the average chav, but there steadily getting worse!

"we havent yet developed bogans to the level of the average chav,"

Clearly you've never been down to Tathra for New Years' Eve.

The ones down there make chavs seem cute & cuddly.

Hey, Brits practically *invented* inbreeding! "Normal for Norfolk" - they reckon that the invention of the bicycle saved most village communities from imploding incest-wise by finally providing a bit of genetic mixing. And as Steve Knightley (from the band "Show of Hands") says, the West Country is only one step removed from the backwoods of America.

And not to mention the chinless Harries and Harriets from the old aristo families...

When I was a lad (70s, rural Sussex) we used the word "chav" as a corruption of "chap"... "Alright chavs?" was a common greeting in these parts. It was definitely localised slang amongst us young 'uns....

from soccer am.