Word.ws English Dictionary

chav

/t͡ʃæv/

chav noun: a working-class youth, especially one associated with aggression, poor education, and a perceived "common" taste in clothing and lifestyle.

Noun

chav (plural chavs)

  1. (Ireland, UK, derogatory, offensive) A working-class youth, especially one associated with aggression, poor education, and a perceived "common" taste in clothing and lifestyle.
    • Lyrical staff / Never could they ever take me for a chav / Scholar in the English, scholar in the Math / Dizzee ain't no riff raffa. 2009, Dizzee Rascal, “Creeper (Freestyle)”
    • His book concerns ‘chavs’, a supposed underclass of ill-educated, fast-breeding, violent and amoral poor people currently plaguing Britain.2011 June 18, “Giving the poor a good kicking”, in The Economist

Synonyms of chav

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of chav

Forms of chav

pluralchavs

Origin of chav

Origin uncertain; probably of Angloromani origin. Compare Romani chavi (“male child”) or ćhavo, shavo (“female child”), chal (“boy”), chavvy (“mate, friend”), compare Swedish tjej; possibly cognate with Portuguese chavalo, Spanish chaval, German Chabo, Russian чувак (čuvak), Hungarian csávó. See also charva. Derivations from council-housed and violent, Cheltenham average (and similar) are folk-etymological backronyms.

Words formed from chav

Words that rhyme with chav

Questions about chav

What does chav mean?
Chav means a working-class youth, especially one associated with aggression, poor education, and a perceived "common" taste in clothing and lifestyle.
What part of speech is chav?
Chav is a noun.
How do you pronounce chav?
Chav is pronounced /t͡ʃæv/ (UK).
What is the plural of chav?
The plural of chav is chavs.

Words near chav in the dictionary

  1. chauvinistic
  2. chauvinistically
  3. chauvinists
  4. chauvinize
  5. Chauvins
  6. chav
  7. Chava
  8. Chavacano
  9. Chavan
  10. Chavana
  11. Chavanas

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chav (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-uk-chav.ogg.

Cite this entry: “chav.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chav. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.