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Chic (/ˈʃiːk/;French:[ʃik]), meaning "stylish" or "smart", is an element offashion. It was originally aFrench word.
Chic is aFrench word, established inEnglish since at least the 1870s. Early references in English dictionaries classified it as slang andNew Zealand-bornlexicographerEric Partridge noted, with reference to itscolloquial meaning, that it was "not so used in Fr[ench]."[1]Gustave Flaubert notes inMadame Bovary (published in 1856) that "chicard" (one who is chic) is thenParisian very current slang for "classy" noting, perhaps derisively, perhaps not, that it was bourgeois. There is a similar word inGerman,schick, with a meaning similar tochic, which may be the origin of the word inFrench; another theory linkschic to the wordchicane.[2] Although the French pronunciation (/ˈʃiːk/ or "sheek") is now virtually standard and was that given byFowler,[3]chic was often rendered in theanglicised form of "chick".[4]
In a fictionalvignette forPunch (c. 1932) Mrs F. A. Kilpatrick attributed to a young woman who 70 years later would have been called a "chavette" the following assertion: "It 'asn't go no buttons neither ... That's the latest ideer. If you want to be chick you just 'ang on to it, it seems".[5]
By contrast, inAnita Loos' novel,Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), the diarist Lorelei Lee recorded that "the French use the word 'sheik' for everything, while we only seem to use it for gentlemen when they seem to resembleRudolf Valentino" (a pun derived from the latter's being the star of the 1921 silent film,The Sheik).
The Oxford Dictionary[clarification needed] gives the comparative and superlative forms ofchic aschicer andchicest. These are wholly English words: the French equivalents would beplus chic andle/la plus chic.Super-chic is sometimes used: "super-chic Incline bucket in mouth-blown, moulded glass".[6]
An adverbchicly has also appeared: "Pamela Gross ... turned up chicly dressed down".[7]
The use of the Frenchtrès chic (very chic) by an English speaker – "Luckily it'strès chic to be neurotic in New York"[8] – is usually rather pretentious, but sometimes merely facetious – Micky Dolenz ofThe Monkees described theAmerican Indian-style suit he wore at theMonterey Pop Festival in 1967 as"très chic".[9]Über-chic is roughly the mock-German equivalent: "Like his clubs, it's super-modern, über-chic, yet still comfortable".[10]
The opposite of "chic" isunchic: "the then uncrowded, unchic little port ofSt Tropez".[11]
Over the years "chic" has been applied to, among other things, social events, situations, individuals, and modes or styles of dress. It was one of a number of "slang words" thatH. W. Fowler linked to particular professions – specifically, to "society journalism" – with the advice that, if used in such a context, "familiarity will disguise and sometimes it will bring out its slanginess."[12]
