Chavtastic Tweeters: 21 new words for the 21st century

The boom in personal electronic communication has required a whole new set of words in the last ten years, and internet crazes have added plenty more. Society has changed too, with new social distinctions and awareness of new problems – or old problems that suddenly seem important. Then there’s the world of politics and an ever-increasing cross-cultural fertilisation and globalisation of business and politics.

New technology

Google’s search engine began life in 1996, and google.com was registered a year later. However, the dominance of older search engines (Yahoo!, AltaVista, Hotbot – you remember them, don’t you?) meant that it took a little time to take off. By the early years of the 21st century Google had grabbed a huge share of internet searches, was seen as a fine example of the dot-com boom, and had won the trust of millions of surfers. They stopped searching, and started to Google instead – a new verb was born.

Some of those surfers have only one thing in mind: themselves. Vanity surfers (2002) search for themselves on Google – and they may find that they get a Googlewhack (2002) which is when a two-word phrase gets a single Google search result.

The use of word-of-mouth recommendations to sell products is nothing new, but the spread of e-mail communication and video-sharing web sites gave new life to viral marketing (1989) which became viral adverts or just virals in the mid 2000s when companies started to produce eye-catching videos including their products which people liked so much they sent them to friends.

The distribution of electronic rubbish to friends and family was given another huge boost by the advent of Twitter, the short-announcement site. This introduced Tweets (2007) to the pool of mass-communication available online as countless Tweeters and Twitterers Tweeted away. At least this was better than an earlier trend: the sending of sexually-explicit SMS text messages from mobile telephones, or sexting (2005).

You might like to use a social networking site to set up a flash mob (2003) where you gather a large crowd of near strangers to a random event. Or perhaps you prefer to set up or subscribe to a podcast (2004), a sound or video file which can be downloaded to an iPod or MP3 player.

Politics and the environment

The first decade of the 21st century dawned, and a new concept arrived to hang over us all: carbon footprint (2000). This measure of our impact on the planet by estimating our personal production of carbon dioxide was to make many think twice before enjoying a new wave of cheap flights. Those with no choice might have been enjoying extraordinary rendition, an American euphemism for shipping prisoners overseas to be ‘questioned’ in countries with less strict laws on human rights. This came to British attention after the attacks on New York and the invasion of Iraq. British support for the Iraq conflict was influenced by a package of evidence presented to the UK parliament. This ‘dodgy dossier’ is still the subject of controversy, with claims that it had been sexed-up (word of the year in 2003) still being denied.

Social issues

Britain used to have very clear class and age distinctions: now it is so much more complicated as new sub-groups are described by the latest research. Thus 2000 saw the arrival of the tweenager, children of about 11-12 years old, who were too young to become neets (2004) – persons Not in Education, Employment or Training, but who might fall into the most notorious social group of the 2000s – the chav.

Let’s be clear: ‘chav’ is not a new word. But only in 2004 did this obscure slang word suddenly burst into widespread usage as ‘buzzword of the year’. Chavs, and their female equivalent, the chavettes, are a social group that are instantly recognised in the UK – but difficult to define in any positive way. A chav is typically young, assumed to be working class and often unpleasant in behaviour. At first they were defined by their clothes: garishly checked scarves and baseball caps from the Burberry fashion house. So worried were Burberry – a long-established, expensive and respected company – about the number of low-tone people wearing their caps, that the line was hastily discontinued. Nevertheless, the chavs continue to wear highly-conspicuous top-brand (or fake) accessories, gaudy jewellery, hooded tops and/or tracksuit trousers. You don’t have to be poor to be a chav – footballers and reality television stars can easily fall into this category – but it helps.

If you’re far too old to enjoy the chav lifestyle, you might be approaching your forties or fifties. If you are a man – watch out: perhaps it’s time for your menoporsche (2007 – a fast sports car purchased by ageing men who are worried about getting old). That may have been rather hampered by the credit crunch (re-incarnated in 2008) – no-one lending money to anyone else – which has been a key factor in a worldwide economic crisis. Or perhaps you are too worried by Swine Flu (2009) to go outside.

Style and fashion

We’ve noted the fashion choice of the chavs, but other useful expressions took hold in the last decade. The metrosexual (popularised in 2002) male might have become far too obsessed with personal grooming (modesty forbids us to check the origins of ‘back, sack and crack’), perfume and make-up, but probably spends too much time in the gym to be worrying about his moobs (about 2004) – male breasts enlarged with fat.

A rise in the number of women (and men) undergoing cosmetic surgery led to a new phenomenon: the over-sized lips of a collagen-enhanced actress launched the trout pout (2003), while more excess fat and a fashion for low-waisted trousers led to more women displaying their muffin top (rolled into the dictionary in 2006), which is a roll of fat above the top of the trousers. This might be described as a wardrobe malfunction (2004). Chavtastic.