Chavs and mingers

By: Catherine Sleep - 22 August 2006 11:09

Wal-Mart’s UK subsidiary Asda has applied to register the word chav as a trademark for its confectionery. The slang term appears on the chain’s Whatever sweets, along with other colloquial phrases such as bothered and the ever-charming minger. Nice, eh?

For readers not conversant with modern Britspeak, allow me to interpret: chav is difficult to pin down exactly but loosely refers to young people who hang around shopping centres and wear baseball caps, trainers, branded shirts and thick gold chains.

Meanwhile, a minger is a derivation of the adjective minging and is used to describe a person as less than physically attractive. To put them into context, both terms are offensive unless delivered with an extremely bright twinkle in the eye, and maybe even then.

Got that? Pleased to be of service.

Asda aims to go 'chavtastic' for confectionery range