What's a Chav?

[nq:1]What's a Chav?[/nq]
Wikipedia gives a decent explanation.
Iain

[nq:1]What's a Chav?[/nq]
Start with Wikipedia, then Google your way from there! "Chav is a derogatory term applied to certain young people in the United Kingdom."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

Ian

[nq:2]What's a Chav?[/nq]
[nq:1]Start with Wikipedia, then Google your way from there! "Chav is a derogatory term applied to certain young people in the United Kingdom." [/nq]
chav, n.
Brit. slang (derogatory).
(Probably either It has also been suggested that this word is a colloquial shortening of Chatham, the name of a town in Kent where the term is sometimes said to have origin

[nq:1]chav, n. Brit. slang (derogatory). (Probably either (snip)
There's another possible geographical derivation, though to me this seems unlikely; posted here for the sake of completeness.

This theory derives it as an abbreviation of "Cheltenham Average". Cheltenham, where I live, has the image of being a stuffy, upper-to-middle-class place, for which there is a bit of justification

[nq:1]It also has extensive areas of social housing, largely inhabited by unreconstructed working-class people[/nq]
I've used "unreconstructed" in this way without really knowing what it means.
Um... what does it mean?

³The fox knows many things - the hedgehog, one big one.² Archilochus

[nq:2]What's a Chav?[/nq]
[nq:1]Wikipedia gives a decent explanation.[/nq]
YouTube yields some pretty funny takes on the question.

³The fox knows many things - the hedgehog, one big one.² Archilochus

[nq:2]It also has extensive areas of social housing, largely inhabited by unreconstructed working-class people[/nq]
[nq:1]I've used "unreconstructed" in this way without really knowing what it means. Um... what does it mean?[/nq]
I suspect it is a PC substitution for "uncivilised", but I'm only guessing.

Les (BrE)

[nq:2]I've used "unreconstructed" in this way without really knowing what it means. Um... what does it mean?[/nq]
[nq:1]I suspect it is a PC substitution for "uncivilised", but I'm only guessing.[/nq]
Not PC, I think, just a euphemism for "uncivilised", "crude in behaviour", "unrefined", "ill-mannered", "lacking a proper upbringing", and suchlike.
OED:
unreconstructed
spec. (or

[nq:2]I suspect it is a PC substitution for "uncivilised", but I'm only guessing.[/nq]
[nq:1]Not PC, I think, just a euphemism for "uncivilised", "crude in behaviour", "unrefined", "ill-mannered", "lacking a proper upbringing", and suchlike. ... the outcome of the American Civil War; hence gen. not reconciled or converted to the current political orthodoxy; unreformed; die-hard.[/nq]
Aha!

[nq:1]What's a Chav?[/nq]
You've misspelled it. It's "tchav" or "tschav" and is a kind of green borsht, which is a soup. As a mass noun, it ordinarily takes no preceding article, but you could say something like "There is a tschav that contains no beets."
There's a recipe here: .

Bob Lieblich
What, you thought it was British slang?